The New Frontiers of Medical Innovation Are Already Here

A few decades ago, innovation in medicine used to mean a new pill, a new machine, or a new surgical technique. Today, it means a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that helps to prevent depression, a smartwatch that catches atrial fibrillation to save lives, or a genetic test so easy to use that it can be taken in the privacy of a patient’s home. What we call “medical innovation” has undergone radical changes, and with that comes new challenges: Policies, regulations, guidelines, and, even more importantly, our culture and understanding must change with it so that we can enjoy the benefits of the future of health care.

That requires a change in thinking about medical professionals and ourselves. Since the dawn of medicine, doctors have been the most respected figures in a community—they knew everything about the human body, its health, and diseases. They used to occupy the so-called ivory tower of medicine in which they got access to all the information, technologies, studies, papers, textbooks, experience, and expertise they needed to care for patients. The way this centuries-old status quo has started to take shape has had a huge impact on how we define medical innovation, where it’s coming from, and who makes it accessible for the masses.

But the beginning of the 21st century brought some unprecedented developments: global supply chains, the rise of the internet, social media, and now AI.

The ivory tower started breaking down as patients could access the same details and insights as their health care professionals. This has changed the dynamics of the doctor-patient relationship from a traditional hierarchy to more of a partnership in which all parties sit at the same table to help make the best possible medical decisions.

This dynamic is further complicated by the emergence of a new member, a technological entity known as AI, which is growing to deserve a seat at the same table. It can elevate decision-making and serve as the medical assistant we all have been hoping for.

Medical innovation today is no longer confined to the invention of drugs or devices within the walls of research labs, but is a living ecosystem where science, technology, patient empowerment, and society converge. Innovation can emerge from a clinician developing an AI-based assistant, from a community of patients sharing data and stories online, or from a tech startup turning smartphone sensors into diagnostic tools. Exploring a few factors can help with better understanding this phenomenon.

A look at just one example shows the power of medical innovation today as well as a staggering evolution of technologies. Digital therapeutics (DTx) offer evidence-based, clinically backed solutions to manage and/or improve health conditions via software and/or other digital health technologies that complement traditional treatment regimes. With DTx, the use of a smartphone app or an AI algorithm can lead patients to similar outcomes and results as from taking a medication—one well-known example is reSET, a prescription digital therapeutic that uses cognitive behavioral therapy to improve outcomes in patients with substance use disorder. While it might seem like DTx is an idea out of science fiction, a recent study analyzing trends in China, the U.S., Germany, and Belgium identified over 500 DTx, with more than 100 new ones getting approved each year.

The focus of medical innovation has shifted from health care institutions to wherever patients are, essentially making them the point-of-care. For example, 20 years ago implantable cardioverter-defibrillators, devices that continuously monitor the heart’s rhythm and automatically deliver an electric shock when they detect life-threatening rhythms, and drug-eluting stents, which slowly release medication to help keep arteries open, were hailed as breakthrough medical innovations for preventing sudden cardiac death or reopening blocked arteries. Today, an over-the-counter smartwatch can detect atrial fibrillation early and alert its wearer to seek care before even the first symptoms appear. Decades ago, screening innovation might have meant more advanced CT scans that facilitated earlier tumor detection. Today AI algorithms can analyze medical imaging and pathology slides with an accuracy rivaling that of specialists. While innovation in diabetes management might have meant a new generation of genetically modified human insulin or more portable insulin pumps, patients today can wear continuous glucose monitors connected to smartphones to track blood sugar in real time and integrate these monitors with AI-powered apps that provide personalized lifestyle or dosing advice.

And the list goes on. One company delivers vaccines and medical supplies to low-resource regions in central Africa with drones that can cover huge distances even under harsh weather conditions. It is already possible to 3D-print certain medical equipment, customized casts for broken arms, and uniquely shaped medications for kids. With 3D bioprinters, even printing out skin, cartilage, or liver tissues has been proved in peer-reviewed studies. Other tools help patients to take blood samples at home with tiny devices to facilitate their role in clinical trials. Handheld vein finders help a nurse or a phlebotomist take blood samples on the first try. Also, robots have demonstrated the ability to draw blood with high accuracy, potentially surpassing human professionals in some instances and streamlining the blood-drawing process.

It used to take decades for a medical innovation to go from a patent to a product stage. The first nuclear magnetic resonance patents related to medical imaging were filed in the 1950s, but the first clinical MRI scanners didn’t become widely available until the late 1970s or early 1980s. The link between human papillomavirus (HPV) and cervical cancer was established in the 1980s; however, it took until 2006 for the first HPV preventive treatment (Gardasil) to be approved. In contrast, it took less than a decade for an innovative patent for a smartphone case that could obtain ECG data (in the early 2010s) to become a credit card–size device that uses an algorithm to analyze those readings and identify cardiac rhythm issues without human intervention. And today, NASA’s cutting-edge astronaut health monitoring program, which includes wearable biosensors and real-time immune system monitoring, is filtering down to create better remote care for patients on Earth.

For example, while ultrasound was invented earlier, NASA research and training programs significantly advanced the miniaturization and remote use of ultrasound, paving the way for today’s portable, smartphone-connected devices. AI is no longer just another technology; it’s becoming the engine of medical innovation itself. It accelerates discovery by screening drug compounds, decoding proteins, and uncovering disease pathways at unprecedented speed. A staggering example is how DeepMind’s AlphaFold, from the parent company of Google, has mapped the structures of more than 200 million proteins, enabling researchers to identify molecular pathways involved in diseases such as cancer and Parkinson’s more rapidly than ever before.

AI has transformed diagnostics, from its ability to read radiology and pathology scans to powering smartphone apps that detect digital biomarkers in a person’s voice or movement to either diagnose neurological conditions or facilitate rehabilitation after a stroke. AI empowers patients through health copilots and wearables that put monitoring and guidance directly in their hands. It reshapes workflows by supporting doctors with decision-making and reducing administrative burdens, a critical lifeline amid workforce shortages. And it opens entirely new frontiers, from creating digital twins that simulate individual patients to predicting disease risks before symptoms appear.

There is one more exciting aspect of AI boosting medical innovation: finding unusual associations. AI can connect dots between seemingly very different fields that no life science researcher or clinician could find before. Take MRI scans as an example. Radiologists have traditionally needed a complete, high-resolution image before they can interpret it. AI, however, can be trained to recognize patterns from only partial data. That means the scanner doesn’t need to collect every slice of information, which cuts down the time a patient spends in the machine by about 25%, while still producing images accurate enough for diagnosis. Also, researchers trained an AI model to analyze 10-second-long voice recordings to diagnose type 2 diabetes based on certain acoustic features instead of blood sugar levels. This new noninvasive method could help catch diabetes even earlier.

I can even go as far as to predict that the real era of the art of medicine will come with the era of AI. When AI discovers new treatments and runs in silico clinical trials—computer-simulated clinical studies that use virtual patient populations to test how a treatment might work—that physicians, pharma companies, or medical innovators would never think of, our job will be understanding how it has been able to achieve that.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has been one of the most forward-looking regulatory agencies worldwide in bringing advanced technologies to the market. When I first analyzed its database, looking specifically for AI-based and approved or cleared medical technologies, I found 64 in 2020. Today its official database contains more than 1,250 of them, demonstrating extraordinary progress. Radiology is the most AI-invested medical specialty—almost 80% of approved devices—with cardiology a distant second. Specialties such as neurology, hematology, gastroenterology, urology, and ophthalmology also have a handful of devices.

So, understanding all these new aspects of medical innovation, what is next for all of us? First, it is time to shift from patient centricity to patient design. Pharmaceutical companies and medical innovators have been proudly claiming themselves patient-centric, saying that they focus on patient needs. But patient design ensures that patients are involved at the highest level of decision-making within a company, organization, or health care institution. This is the only viable way of including patient voices in the final design of products, services, or guidelines.

In the Netherlands, professor Stefaan Bergé redesigned his oral and maxillofacial surgery department based on patients’ suggestions.

The new space has modern architecture and large windows, with one side housing a simple round table with a desktop computer and a projector where the doctor and patient can chat. They then cross a blue line to enter the examination space and the boundaries of the clinic. Patient satisfaction has soared and the physicians report less stress, benefiting from the partnership they can build with their patients in such an environment.

Second, regulators and policymakers face a new level of challenges in this era. As patients get access to technologies before they are even regulated and rolled out to the market, regulators have to think ahead and use established futures methods to better foresee upcoming opportunities, technological developments, and the accompanying challenges. This was perfectly captured in the discussions on how current and future models of large language models such as ChatGPT could be addressed. When future iterations of ChatGPT-like tools can handle images, sound, video, and full documents, the question is whether regulators could immediately address them and allow such productivity tools to enter the health care market.

Also, we should not wait for a medical catastrophe to adopt a technology faster. For example, telemedicine and remote care services existed for years before COVID-19 forced their widespread adoption. In the U.S., the federal government for the first time started allowing patients with opioid use disorder to receive buprenorphine, a medication proved to reduce overdose deaths, without a previous in-person visit. In Belgium, lawmakers enacted the Royal Decree of 13 May 2020, which allowed health care providers to charge for remote consultations under the national health insurance. This was just one month after the first lockdowns.

And finally, we should all enjoy the benefits of medical innovations. When it comes to health, even the most impressive breakthroughs can never feel truly enough, because as long as people remain sick or uncured, the work of innovation is not finished.

And while challenges remain—Pew Research Center reports that Americans’ trust in science remains lower than it was before the COVID-19 pandemic and that about half of U.S. adults (51%) say they are more concerned than excited about AI— the next frontier seems even more exciting.                 

Digital twins could be developed based on a person’s metabolomic background to test drugs and treatments on them first. Imagine a virtual copy of your body with all its metabolic and molecular background, where therapies can be tried safely before being applied in real life. AI agents that could not only take over the mundane part of medical administration but could even perform a series of digital tasks requested by medical professionals. Longevity interventions that could help detect diseases as early as possible or outright prevent them from happening by simply accessing huge amounts of data about our health.

Medical innovation has always been about extending lives, but in this new era, it is also about expanding possibilities: of what health means, where care happens, and who gets to shape it. The real question is not whether we can develop these technologies, but whether we will build the trust, culture, and foresight to use them wisely. The future of medicine will not arrive fully formed; it will be shaped by every policy we pass, every innovation we adopt, and every patient we invite to the table.

Bertalan Meskó, M.D., Ph.D., known as The Medical Futurist, is the director of The Medical Futurist Institute and serves as a private professor at Semmelweis Medical School in Budapest, Hungary. He regularly shares his analyses on medicalfuturist.com. He is the author of the book Your Map to the Future.

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