The burgeoning medical revolution was a major theme of 2023. “We are seeing a pace of progress that has not been witnessed for 100 years,” Bertalan Meskó, director of the Medical Futurist Institute in Budapest, told Positive News in October.
Meskó is among a chorus of voices hailing a new ‘golden age’ of medicine – thanks, in part, to Covid-19. “Breakthroughs in mRNA technology first applied in Covid vaccines could soon help eradicate certain types of cancer,” he said. “Then there’s the huge potential of AI and 3D printing and, most excitingly, advances in genomics, which will unlock the genetic bases of many diseases, leading to new and more targeted treatments.”
Chris Stokel-Walker, who writes about the medical applications of AI for the British Medical Journal, predicted AI would “supercharge the pace of novel drug discoveries” and analyse and identify tumours in scans “more effectively than humans can”.
Added Meskó: “It’s an amazing time. I feel lucky to be living through it.”
Image: Sam Peet
