ZA'ATAR AND INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH

A Glimpse into a Revolutionary Era.

Mohammad Hourani, Head of OC NGAXVIII.

For decades, the human brain failed to anticipate to what extent technology could take us in the medical field. All the new discoveries and techniques that were considered mere thoughts in some dreamers’ minds have become a key player in critical operations and diagnostic processes, and hundreds of millions of lives have been saved, all thanks to those so-called dreamers.

Throughout history, medical knowledge has deepened drastically from barely understanding the human’s body to almost having the ability to control it and anticipate its whims. All this advancement wouldn’t have been made possible without the role technology has played. As a matter of fact, the services that healthcare facilities provide in our modern days are tightly linked to how technologically advance these facilities are! Because medical technologies and techniques are more than I can even enumerate, I will focus on two outstanding innovations that will brighten the medical field in the near future;

First, mRNA Technology.

As we are facing pretty tough days due to the global pandemic and the changed essence of our lifestyle; I couldn’t stop myself from mentioning one of the most popular modern technologies, which is mRNA technology. mRNA technology has had a great impact on manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines. “mRNA medicines aren’t small molecules, like traditional pharmaceuticals, and they aren’t traditional biologics (recombinant proteins and monoclonal antibodies) – which were the genesis of the biotech industry. Instead, mRNA medicines are sets of instructions. And these instructions direct cells in the body to make proteins to prevent or fight disease.” Although this may sound like a simple principle, it is surprisingly a billion-dollar idea.

Second, Artificial Intelligence.

Let’s bid farewell to the days of misdiagnosis, and say hello to our little helper friend!

Artificial intelligence is a term applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning, critical thinking, and problem-solving. In medical implications, A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) is used to introduce enormous amounts of medical data into a healthcare system that processes these data and comes up with solutions to clinical problems. This technology may outperform doctors in some clinical scenarios and ensure the highest degree of precision. In a very “leap of faith”-ish manner, this technology could perform the ultimate paradigm shift in the very near future in terms of diagnosing different kinds of malignancies depending on some algorithms such as ‘Deep Learning based Automatic Detection’ and ‘Lymph Node Assistant’ which surpass the detection abilities of many physicians and identify suspicious regions that are undistinguishable to the naked eye.

So, as far as I can tell, the future of medicine will be redesigned in accordance with each new technological innovation. While I’m a huge fan of the great Serj Tankian, I have to disagree with him on one point regarding science; for “Science shall save our Mother Earth”.