- The rise of generative AI has begun with Google’s Med-Palm2 algorithm, which provides answers to medical questions.
- Other technologies, such as digital twins, will coexist with more common tools, such as devices for painless blood extraction.
The year 2024 promises to be full of new developments and trends in healthcare and medicine. While we talk about medical innovations 2024, only a few of them will come to fruition in the next 12 months. It is also very likely that they will become transformative levers for healthcare in the very near future.
Below, we review the key medical innovations in 2024 that will revolutionize the sector this year and in the years to come.
Table of Contents
Generative Artificial Intelligence
The future of medicine is written in terms of Artificial Intelligence. No one doubts its potential to revolutionize the diagnostic field and, by extension, the treatment of certain diseases, especially those of a serious nature.
However, the implementation of generative artificial intelligence, that is, the kind used to create content and improve patient care, is still in its infancy and has a long way to go, as indicated by the consultancy McKinsey.
This tool is trained to perform preconfigured tasks such as offering intelligent answers to patient questions or creating medical summaries. The ease of configuration of this technology makes its implementation very simple. The result will be chatbots and chronic health management applications that will help patients resolve questions about their daily lives in simple language.
One application already available belongs to the technology company Google and is called Med-Palm2. Probably, a leap among the medical innovations 2024. It is an algorithm designed to answer medical questions and its results were reported by the journal Nature. With an accuracy rate of more than 67%, its use is already being tested in several American hospitals.
Digital Twins in Healthcare
Digital twins are a new, safe technological tool for simulating and predicting the behavior of bodies or organs and developing effective personalized treatment plans. Their growth potential is enormous: their market value is estimated to increase from $1.6 billion in 2023 to $21.1 billion in 2028, according to the consulting firm Markets and Markets.
This technology will allow us to understand aspects as diverse as how the heart suffers the effects of smoking over the years or how two extra hours of sleep can affect our body, to name just two examples. Although the technology is still in its infancy, it will allow us to design increasingly complex and rigorous digital twins to understand, for example, the effect of a drug on a specific disease.
Among many tech under medical innovations 2024, digital twins are already being used to plan surgeries, develop drugs and treat diseases – safely.
In addition, digital twins provide physicians with a better understanding of each patient’s individual anatomy and physiology to optimize personalized medicine through efficiency and cost reduction.
Evidence-based Digital Therapies (DTx)
Over the years, many initiatives based on new technologies have emerged to complement and even perform certain treatments with digital tools.
Digital therapies (DTx) involve the use of these tools and various types of software to manage a person’s health conditions. Many of these solutions work through smartphones and other easily accessible devices, and their usefulness is multiplied when combined with traditional therapies, hence making their place in the list of medical innovations 2024.
Under the Digital Therapeutics Alliance, an organization that includes the world’s leading healthcare companies, there are several solutions. These include:
- Propeller Health, which is designed to monitor patients’ health;
- Dario Health, which monitors diseases such as diabetes and hypertension; and
- Freespira, which offers an FDA-approved treatment that can mitigate panic attacks and PTSD symptoms at home in just one month.
The rise of digital therapies can be seen in their business numbers. According to consulting firm Fortune Business Insights, the market will be worth more than $5.5 billion by 2022, and is expected to exceed $28.6 billion by 2030.
Reliable and Painless Blood Tests
Blood tests are the most common diagnostic tests and the ones that can provide the most information about a patient’s overall health.
Although new biomarkers are emerging every day to identify certain diseases, blood tests remain the most commonly ordered test, with physicians recommending that their patients undergo an annual analysis.
But what is the most effective, least painful and least invasive method? According to this report, venipuncture can have an error rate of up to 27% in patients with poorly visible veins, up to 40% in people without palpable veins, and as high as 60% in emaciated patients. And repeated errors are not only a painful and traumatic experience for patients, especially those with chronic conditions, they also increase the likelihood of phlebitis, an inflammation of the vein walls.
To avoid this, robots and devices have proliferated in recent years to facilitate this necessary task and speed up the blood draw. Some of them, like One Draw and the Tasso (used for clinical trials and DNA testing), have made a presence in the list of medical innovations 2024.
Finally, hospitals can now count on an automated solution called Vitestro, which combines AI-based ultrasound-guided 3D reconstruction with robotic needle insertion, ensuring accurate and safe blood collection.
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