Question: what do you think is the next step in medical technology

Christopher Bullock answered on 21 Jun 2017:

Medicine is a pretty complicated place with a lot of competing approaches – it can sometimes be difficult to predict which one will be the one that works out best. This one of the things that makes working in medical research so fascinating. However, I can try and make a few predictions based on my own experience and knowledge.

In general terms, I think that the amount of personal data used in medicine will increase a lot through the use of intelligent computer programs and big data. This will lead to more and more medical therapies being tailored to each individual patient rather than the current one-size-fits-all approach that get used. This is what we know as personalised medicine. The more intelligent medicine gets, the more effective it will be.

From my own work, I think the field of regenerative medicine is really taking off. This is where we try and get the body to regenerate itself to reverse the affects of disease. There are lots of technologies involved in this, including advanced materials and stem cell science (both of which I work on).

In the relatively near future we will start to see more and more advanced prosthetics – robotic arms that are controlled by the mind and can ‘feel’ in the same way that a real hand can. We can also include retinal prostheses (artificial eyes) on this list.

Finally, I think cell therapy will start to become a very effective therapy for certain genetic diseases and cancer.

There are many thousands of scientists around the world working on all of these technologies but it does take a long time to make progress. Many of these technologies will not be ready in ten years, but maybe they will be in 30!