The future of medicine

Thesis: The future of medicine holds advancements in medical technology that will greatly increase our longevity and quality of life.
I. Introduction
A. Attention Getter: Everyone in this room is going to DIE, what matters to each one of you is when and how your death is going to happen.
B. Relevance: The answer to both how and when you are going to die will change dramatically with new medical technology emerging.
C. Credibility: As a Pre-Med neuroscience student, I’ve been very interested in the up and coming technology in medicine. In fact, this summer I studied in Germany learning about brain computer interfaces, but I will get more into that later.
D. Thesis: (What matters to each one of you is that) the future of medicine holds incredible technological advancements that will greatly increase our longevity and quality of life.
E. Preview: In the not so distant future, medicine will tell you if you are about to get sick, or if any of your organs need replacing new ones will be grown with your DNA, and if you are paralyzed or disabled you will be able to control robotic exoskeletons to compensate for any loss with your brain waves.
Transition: Now I know this sounds kind of technical and boring and you are probably thinking why do I care, let me answer that. Currently medicine is set up so that if you feel sick you go to the doctor, but by the time you feel symptoms, for instance of cancer, you have a later stage of the disease which is often a death sentence. With improved preventative medical technology, you will be treated at the very beginning stages of any illness while it’s still easy to treat and cure.
II. Body
A. Preventative Medicine
1. We are coming into an age where self-testing will be easily and painlessly done routinely at home and instantly uploaded to your physician so they can monitor your health and make a diagnosis. Whether it’s a patch that wirelessly monitors your blood pressure, a heart monitor or blood and urine tests that easily upload to your phone or computer right to your doctor and in the next decade these will be the norm in everybody’s homes. The way things are heading, in the future, we will have diapers that sample a child’s urine and bowl movement and analyze critical levels and any abnormalities and sends the information digitally to your doctor.
2. Also, revolutionized medical scanning will be faster and more convenient because of the new technology being developed in hand held body scanners that will allow doctors or maybe even you take x-ray, cat scan or ultrasound instantly anywhere for instant diagnosis.
3. Also, if your doctor is far away, there is now the RP7 robotic doctor. The RP7 is a robot a screen showing the doctor’s face a high quality camera showing him what is going on, so a doctor could see a patient from a remote location.
Transition: Now what happens when you need a new organ?
B. Regenerative Medicine
1. Today, everyone knows that there are not enough transplant organs to go around. There are patients at the bottom of a transplant list waiting on their deathbed for a donor. A new technology is being developed that uses a 3-D printer with human cells as the ink to create brand new organs, this ensures that everyone has the organs they need.
2. And what about regeneration? If you cut off a starfishes arm, most of the time a new one will regenerate. Why can’t human’s regrow organs or body parts? With the new technology and research in human stem cells we are finding that we can. These cells have the ability to morph and arrange themselves into new organs.
3. So because of regenerative medicine, a few years down the road, people who have failing organs due to age will simply get a replacement and dying from old age will become significantly less common as life-spans increase dramatically.
Transition: As I mentioned earlier, this summer in Germany I studied this amazing new technology called Brain Computer Interfaces. Imagine transmitting signals directly to someone's brain that would allow them to see, hear or feel specific sensory inputs. Consider the potential to manipulate computers or machinery with a thought.
C. BCI/BMI
1. Think about people who are completely paralyzed, who have lost control over their own bodies. Using this technology which interprets brain signals, paralyzed patients can control a robotic arm on their own.
2. Taking this one step further, researchers have built exoskeleton machines giving paralyzed individuals control over their entire body with their brain
3. And where the patient can no longer speak, where a completely locked-in they can think letters with their minds that type into a machine that will translate into speech for them.
Transition: This new paradigm in medical technology is all in it’s research stages now but is only a few years away from being a reality that will make a big difference for you and your loved ones lives. III. Conclusion
A. Preventative medicine is expanding at an unimaginable rate, while research in regenerative medicine promises prolonged health, and new technology called brain-computer-interfaces are restoring hope in people that never thought they could move or speak again.
B. This technology will change all of our lives.
C. The future of medicine holds advancements in medical technology that will greatly increase our longevity and quality of life.
D. We all are going to die. But much later in life and less dramatically than previous generations thanks to medical advancements