High-definition eyes CLOSER TO REALITY
MEDICAL TECHNOLOGIES KEEP PUSHING THE LIMITS
A website calls it an “insane device”, a term that could have been the first reaction from anyone 10 years or so ago. In today’s world, though, news that a British Columbian optometrist has invented an artificial lens that he says not only corrects a patient’s sight, but offers a level of clarity three times greater than natural 20/20 vision is very encouraging at best. It’s not that surprising, though, as medical technology, like all other technologies, is pushing the limits in every direction.
Garth Webb will be god in the eyes, no pun intended, of all people with eyesight problems. The optometrist in British Columbia has spent eight years and more than US$3 million (Bt101 million) in funding to develop the Ocumetics Bionic Lens, according to CBC News. The bionic lens, which was designed to replace the eye’s natural lens, is surgically implanted in the eye in an eight-minute procedure. Yes, you’ve read it correctly – eight minutes.
The following Webb quote has gone viral. “If you can just barely see the clock at 10 feet, when you get the bionic lens you can see the clock at 30 feet away,” Webb told CBC News.
Arrangements for clinical trials on animals and blind patients are already underway. The good news is he expects the product to become commercially available within two years. The not-so-good news is nobody is quite sure how much it will cost.
In another piece of good news medically, scientists at MIT in the US have invented a 1.7-centimetre-square robot capable of assembling itself like a piece of origami. The Untethered Miniature Origami Robot offers a great range of medical possibilities. It is powered by a small neodymium magnet and four electromagnetic coils underneath the robot’s surface that create magnet fields necessary for it to operate. According to reports, which provide a glimpse into the robot’s medical revolutionary potential, the tiny thing can
walk on different surfaces, climb, carry objects twice its own weight, swim in shallow water, burrow, and even dissolve in an acetone solution leaving behind just the magnet.
So, what’s next? There are hopes that scientists can now develop even smaller autonomous robots with additional sensors that dissolve in water. Such tiny devices could do a variety of precise and delicate medical work inside humans. There is talk about zapping cancer cells or cleaning clogged arteries. These two potential missions alone could make humans live considerably longer.
“Nanobots” will soon be the word on everyone’s lips. Many scientists are working day and night to make it a reality. According to a recent CNN report, at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, the extremely high ambition of developing microscopic robots that are guided by externally generated magnetic fields for use in the human body is looking increasingly practical.
Forget The X-Files TV and movie series, from which the idea of super-tiny robots doing unimaginable things wowed people in the real world. Innovators are seriously envisioning the day when millions or billions |of the tiniest “doctors” could be sent into your body to fix troubled spots.
In the near future, humans’ eyesight will be a lot better and we will give brain and heart disease and cancer a real fight. There are people who benefit financially from delivering technological innovations, and there are people like Garth Webb whose work offers real, meaningful hope for all human beings.
In the aforementioned developments alone, we are already looking at humans living longer and seeing the world in high definition. It’s people like Webb and other dedicated innovators who make all of us truly optimistic about technological advancements.
