Talk:Open Source Medicine
We should define what exactly this page is for; are we talking just about the restructuring of the healthcare system along more open, collaborative lines, or are we discussing actual treatments, or both?
Telesurgery definitely deserves a mention here. Imagine you could be operated on by a specialist surgeon anywhere in the world. You just go into an operating theater with robots and a high-resolution camera and the surgeon operates the robots remotely. This is fully mature technology. Open collaboration makes this possible, as you have access to all the world's surgeons.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1681689/
Telesurgery, but also fully robotic surgery won't be far behind.
http://www.adciv.org/Image:DaVinci-Robot.jpg
Interesting talk on robotic surgery: http://www.ted.com/talks/catherine_mohr_surgery_s_past_present_and_robotic_future.html
These robots could be scaled down to the micro or nano level and controlled wirelessly from the outside. As Feynman said, "it would be interesting in surgery if you could swallow the surgeon"
Preventive medicine/ Public health
Medicine is not just about diagnosis and treatment – what about compliance and prevention? How does a culture make people eat more healthily, for example?
We sorta have the answers to Alzheimer's (meditation and turmeric), cancer (anti-angiogenic foods, garlic, turmeric), osteoporosis (weightbearing exercise, calcium and vitamin D), cardiovascular disease (omega-3, avoiding saturated fat, exercise), type-II diabetes (exercise, avoiding sugar), lung cancer (the obvious) and other degenerative diseases.
Healthcare could be massively unburdened by a change in attitude, by people taking more responsibility. But people don't. A world where people eat a lot of fruit and vegetables, exercise two hours a week and meditate would be a world with maybe a quarter as much degenerative disease. I do not currently have any particular suggestions on how this might be achieved.
