By Bryce Beamer
Josh McHugh is the editor-in-chief of FutureOf.org, a group of writers and researchers charting the future of medicine and sports. He’s also the co-founder of Attention Span Media, an innovation agency propelling businesses through strategic insights and marketing.
In this exclusive interview, we delve into McHugh’s views on the post-pandemic health landscape and the future of AI in healthcare.
Caption: Josh McHugh
Bryce Beamer: In 2018, you published “The Future of Medicine,” which forecasted how new technologies would impact healthcare in the next 25 years. The world has experienced radical change and technological growth in the five years since its publication. What have been the biggest surprises in health-technology trajectory?
Josh McHugh: The biggest surprise: the world’s governments and the pharmaceutical industry came together early in the Covid pandemic and produced a series of vaccines using a brand-new approach. We had predicted a pandemic in “The Future of Medicine” and said that cross-border collaboration would be needed to deal with it – but to see that actually happen was amazing.
BB: Your report predicted some political and infrastructure challenges realized during the COVID-19 pandemic. Moving forward, what technologies do you see having the most significant returns for minimizing the impact of future epidemics, and how could they be implemented to prevent epidemics?
JM: mRNA vaccines are a total game-changer, thanks to designability, speed of development, and lower costs compared to traditional vaccines. With its targeted approach, mRNA has the potential to help shape treatments beyond vaccines, including cancer treatments and gene therapy.
We predicted the development of what we called “DNA sentinels” — devices with airborne-pathogen-detecting sensors that would be deployed at ports, border checkpoints, airports, and other transportation hubs. These devices do exist today, but they aren’t yet widely deployed. An early step toward DNA sentinels: the temperature sensors some airports were using during the height of the pandemic.
BB: As a result of COVID-19, tools that enable remote work, education, and medical treatment have received an influx of funding and significant technological advancement. As tools intended for virtual conferencing transition to healthcare, what technology gaps have been exposed?
JM: Telehealth boomed during COVID’s peak, and patient requests for telehealth visits have stayed high. Though great for patients from a convenience standpoint, telehealth visits can make it harder for doctors to diagnose using visual and tactile analysis, forcing them to engage in longer “Q&A” diagnostic sessions. We can see this gap (between the positive patient experience and negative doctor experience) being closed in the near future by a combination of sensor-powered home health scanners, augmented and virtual (vs. merely digital) doctor visits, and AI that gathers data from a wide range of sources and helps doctors diagnose patient conditions more quickly and accurately.
BB: Do you see other influential technologies transitioning from industry, education, or sport that will likely be adapted to health?
JM: The early headlines around LLMs, like OpenAI’s GPT series, were largely focused on generative AI’s impact on education: about students using the technology to cheat on writing assignments and about how the models were able to ace standardized tests. But not too long after that, the notion of being able to train LLMs on high-quality, vetted medical information started catching on, thanks to the amazing Eric Topol of the Scripps Translational Research Institute.
BB: Speaking of the benefits of AI in healthcare, your team projected that AI and Machine Learning would grow significantly due to the efficacy of image processing via ML. In the past 12 months, we have seen radical growth in large language model AI. What role will LLM have in healthcare?
JM: LLMs will have a massive role in healthcare. They’ll enable the world’s best medical practices to be democratized and distributed worldwide in an instantly applicable way. That said, there’s a tremendous amount of oversight, data hygiene, fine-tuning, and real-world testing that has to happen before we reach that health AI utopia, but we think we’ll get there.
BB: What challenges might we face as AI is introduced into our health systems?
JM: Training an LLM on your organization’s data features a big upside — and a huge downside if the training data are not anonymized and adequately secured in the system architecture. There’s at least one recent example of researchers inadvertently exposing terabytes of private data.
BB: In 'The Future of Medicine,' you explore the concept of trickle-up innovation, highlighting how designing for the needs of the developing world could lead to disruptions in first-world healthcare systems. Could you provide examples or details of projects successfully utilizing this approach?
JM: My favorite examples of trickle-up innovation right now are in the area of prosthetics. In recent years, there have been some wonderful stories from Sudan (Project Daniel) and Sierra Leone (Prosthetics for All) in which innovative humanitarians used 3D printing technology to design, fit, and build prosthetic limbs for amputees in those war-torn countries. The global e-NABLE network, with members in more than 100 countries, collaboratively produces free 3D-printed prosthetics for those in need. As a result of this low-cost global innovation, you’ve seen prices for prosthetics with some of the most sophisticated functionality drop from the $50,000-$100,000 range down below $10,000.
BB: What enabled this company to take a new approach?
JM: For all these organizations, grassroots (Prosthetics for All and e-Nable) to corporate ( Unlimited Tomorrow and Open Bionics), the key enablers have been the drop in the cost of 3D printing, combined with the ability to add increasingly smart and powerful controller software and sensors to prosthetics.
BB: With the growing integration of robotics in healthcare, such as surgical robots and patient care automation, what are the key benefits and potential risks associated with this medical technology?
JM: Surgical robots have been a huge step forward for precision surgeries. We don’t see any major dangers on that front simply because they’re being used and developed not as replacements for surgeons but rather as tools to help surgeons perform more accurate and efficient operations. Beyond that, we see exoskeletal technology emerging from the prosthetics world that is becoming increasingly adopted by Gen X. Next up: soft robotics will help us get around and function as we age, a la Big Hero 6.
BB: Do you see any regulatory measures that might influence robotics’ future adoption and effectiveness within the healthcare sector?"
JM: On the regulatory front, we’re looking at an increasingly dire shortage of doctors and nurses in the coming decade. Look for regulatory measures to incentivize the use of robotics in healthcare.
Thanks to Josh McHugh for sharing his healthcare insights and to Attention Span Media for the work they do to help shape the future. Find their new report, “Future of Health,” here.
Bryce Beamer is a seasoned product developer who works at the intersection of electronics, hard goods, and soft goods, focusing on manufacturing process innovation and speculative user experience design. Bryce has worked on wearable products for sportswear, medical, and industrial safety applications, blending his academic research at the Rochester Institute of Technology with his own professional practice.
The views expressed are those of the author, and do not reflect the opinions of Arrow Electronics Inc. or its affiliates.
