2017 is the year healthcare goes sci-fi

Jan 11, 2017

A woman undergoes an eye examination in Kenya using a specially designed app Image: REUTERS/Noor Khamis

Jeroen Tas

Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer, Royal Philips

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Doctors remotely monitor live footages of patients inside an electronic intensive care unit (eICU) at Fortis hospital in New Delhi, India, January 20, 2016. Picture taken January 20, 2016. To match INDIA-HOSPITALS/ REUTERS/Adnan Abidi - RTX25W00

Doctors remotely monitor patients at a hospital in India Image: REUTERS/Adnan Abidi

Rosalind Picard, MIT professor and chief scientist at Empatica, and Matteo Lai (L), CEO of Empatica, wear the company's Embrace devices while talking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts November 25, 2015. A new wave of wearable computing devices that detect and monitor serious diseases is moving from the laboratory to the market, potentially transforming the treatment of conditions ranging from epilepsy to diabetes and creating business opportunities estimated to be worth tens of billions of dollars. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Empatica, is developing a wristband designed to alert epilepsy patients and their caregivers of seizures in the hope of averting a dangerous post-seizure condition that can cause sudden, unexpected death. Empatica founder Picard, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and inventor, told Reuters the company has just started large clinical trials using its wristband device on individuals with depression. Picture taken November 25, 2015. To match Insight HEALTH-WEARABLES/FDA REUTERS/Brian Snyder - RTX1Z79H

A new wave of wearable devices that detect and monitor diseases is hitting the market Image: REUTERS/Brian Snyder

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