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13/11/2008
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What does the future hold for medical devices, the environment and technology in general? Tom Shelley has been finding out
There’s no use planning too far into the future, it would seem – and that’s according to futurologist Ian Pearson.
“Technology is going to accelerate more in the next 20 years than in the last 100 years,” he says. “You can’t plan five years ahead with any chance of success.”
With the current world economic turmoil, who would argue with him? Addressing business people in Birmingham recently, assembled by Advantage West Midlands, Pearson’s advice was to plan only new schemes or products that can come to fruition in two or three years.
With those present mostly engaged in the medical sector, he began by looking at the problems likely to be caused by the ageing UK population, with the message: “You can’t afford to keep on increasing the health budget.”
He therefore argued that most elderly people would have to be cared for at home, an option many would prefer as well, leading to an increased need for sensors and systems to ensure all was well and provide support.
Pearson quit BT in December 2007, but work was already underway there, he says, to develop a technology based on a microphone – costing about 75 pence – that could monitor much of what was going on in a household by being attached to water pipes. Signal processing could easily distinguish between the sounds generated by taking a shower, a toilet being flushed or a sink tap being used, so as to ascertain whether the person being discreetly monitored was exhibiting a behaviour pattern that might be associated with illness or no pattern at all – because they had had a fall and been disabled.
But these are nothing to what will be possible from two other developments that Pearson foresees: electronic jewellery and active skin. Apart from medical monitoring, which would be enhanced by sensors worn in contact with the skin, he forecast that, before long, macroscopic devices such as mobile phones and PDAs would be reduced to the size of an ear stud and hence wearable.
As well as medical monitoring and keeping in touch with the home and office, he also foresees opportunities for entirely new products such as an ‘Ego badge’, which could communicate at short range not only with points of sale in which the user might be interested, but also with other ego badges worn by people with similar interests, whom the user might wish to get to know. Pearson then went on to suggest that this would lead to increasing regulation, because there would be “more potential to exploit customers”, as well as other new opportunities. However, he cautioned against over-optimism for the commercial potential of web-based schemes that were not yet profitable. “The web is now past critical mass,” he warned. If a model based on use of the Internet does not work now, it never will, he added.
Active skin, he explains, in a report titled ‘Age in the future’ (freely downloadable from www.futurizon.net), is the idea of printing electronics circuits on to thin plastic membranes straight onto the skin surface. Pearson suggests that a typical application might be diabetes control, whereby blood sugar levels could be monitored, signals sent to a clinic and a membrane with controllable pores used to allow the right amount of insulin to diffuse in from a small container worn like a wristwatch. He also suggests that the same technology might be used for electronically controlled makeup – and, if delivered as small capsules blasted into the skin surface, used for short-term security ID or medical monitoring; or, if blasted in deeper, used for Lifetime ID or permanent monitoring or control.
He does not favour vast, centralised IT systems as potential ways where high tech might be used to cut healthcare costs, arguing against centralising “anything bigger than about 100 PCs”. As regards the NHS centralised data schemes, he considers these as examples of decisions by “160 IQ people, with a collective IQ of nine or 10”. Instead, he favours increased use of artificial intelligence and predicts that, by 2015 to 2020, “a £300 PC will be able to replace a £150,000 per year consultant”.
He also predicts that this will be part of a wider trend. “Today, many people work as smart machines. Tomorrow, people will have to work as people.”
In the future, he told those assembled, there will be a great need for interpersonal skills. “Women are good at this. Nurses cannot be replaced by machines, but consultants will, so nurses may end up being paid more than consultants and the 21st century will see an inversion of the glass ceiling.” Worryingly for men, perhaps, he argues that computers can do many ‘male’ skills – such as running machines, making technical decisions or reading maps – better than humans.
Turning to environmental issues and sustainability, Pearson argued the case for “rapid obsolescence”: replacing inefficient machines with new and much more efficient, and better performing, replacements. He related this both to electronic devices – whose performance continues to double each year, while halving size and energy consumption – and cars. Looking back to horse-drawn transport – “slow, dirty, expensive and inefficient” – and how London would be deep in horse droppings, if they were still in general use, he compares this with future-looking cars such as the Tesla Roadster, with its 0 to 60mph in 3.9s acceleration, zero emissions and less than 1 pence per mile fuel cost.
When it comes to solving our energy – and environmental – needs in the future, one solution he favours is putting solar power generating systems in desert areas, pointing out that, if its 9m square km were used to generate 8.5 kW/square metre per day, at 12% efficiency, this would amount to 600TW, considerably greater than the total present world human energy requirement of 13.5TW.
As for his general advice to those concerned about supplying clean energy to the world, the message is clear: “Don’t panic, we can solve this using simple technology.”
Pointers
* Huge growth is seen in the medical sector for sensing and other systems, improving assistance and support for the elderly, enabling them to live independently for longer
* Artificial intelligence is likely to supplant human decision-making in many technical matters, but humans – particularly women – will still be required to apply inter-personal skills
* Old and inefficient cars, and other machines, should be rendered obsolescent and replaced by better and more efficient products as soon as is practicable
* The technology already exists to fulfil our clean energy needs, but we should not rush into making possibly wrong decisions.
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Author
Tom Shelley
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