Today, on the occasion of World Health Day, I am sharing some ideas about the combination of creativity and new technologies applied to the medical field, and how their enormous potential positively affects our health and global well-being. From the impact of artificial intelligence on data processing and personalization in diagnosis and treatment, to its advantages in areas such as sports medicine, providing great value in injury prediction, personalized training plans and diets, as well as real-time performance analysis, measurement and comparison.
New spaces such as metaverses, which already host medical classrooms, promote education through virtual and 3D spaces whose ability to simulate real environments brings great value and versatility to learning, creating collaborative environments beyond spatial barriers, multisensory experiences, real-time information updates, etc. All of this supports new educational approaches in which gamification and creativity take center stage.
For their part, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have entered medicine to facilitate, enhance and prioritize information through the power of creativity and substantial amounts of design. From medical package inserts transformed into understandable and visually appealing information, to medical equipment that specialists can view in 3D, in full detail and within their working environment, simply by scanning a QR code. The usefulness of AR and VR can also be seen in applications that make it possible to detect veins in patients with very fine veins; those that help improve the effectiveness of mental health treatments; those that address smoking; those that assist specialists during surgical procedures; breast self-examination applications that help detect possible abnormalities; those that create routes to nearby defibrillators; and those that explain anatomy to us in an educational and entertaining way, among the many applications already available within the medical-pharmaceutical sector, one of the sectors adopting these new technologies most extensively and effectively in the service of health.
Immediacy, real-time information updates, traceability and a great deal of creativity are some of the common characteristics of these types of applications. Art plays an important role. Visual impact, the possibility of prioritizing information in a striking way and aesthetic sensitivity, combined with technology, give the message a different value, help people assimilate content more effectively and create high-quality—visual—information for prevention, early diagnosis and the demystification of certain conditions.