HP Innovation Journal Issue 03: Summer 2016 | Page 14

Technology convergence in medicine Microelectronics Microfluidics Distributed network Analytics Fig. 3: Technology convergence in medicine enables decentralization of medical technologies Challenges in our healthcare system Today, chronic diseases, such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases and diabetes, are by far the leading cause of mortality in the world, representing 60% of all deaths. 1 Healthcare systems are not sustainable anymore and costs in most countries are rising faster than their gross domestic product (GDP). 2 The world has changed substantially in the past 50 years, while the healthcare systems have stayed mostly stagnant. However, seismic shifts in the health- care industry have recently begun: large scale alliances across industry segments are driving innovation to disrupt the non-sustainable exist- ing healthcare system, lower cost, and increase access to personalized medical information. The abundance of technology, availability of genomics, health, and lifestyle data coming to the market every day helps us monitor, measure, and adjust our habits to improve our health and the outcomes of treatment. Drivers for innovation New imperatives of healthcare are focusing on prevention, personalization of diagnostics and treatment, and democratization, including access to everyone, anywhere, anytime at a low cost. This imperative is based on two pillars: ubiquitously distributed (decentralized) diag- nostics tools for capturing the health status and processing of the data into personalized, readily accessible and actionable health information. The decentralized diagnostics tools will require low power, connected, commercial mobility devices driving affordable high-tech, low cost microfluidics cartridges—technically similar to 1 World Health Organization 2 Healthcare Disrupted, 2016 14 Innovation Journal · Issue 3 · Summer 2016 the microfluidics cartridges for inkjet printers—to interrogate by biochemical means the health status. The clinically relevant data obtained will be processed on-site to provide immediate insight into the patient’s health condition. The technology convergence in medicine is enabled by the powerful combination of microelectron- ics, microfluidics, distributed network and data analytics (see fig. 3). Our assets for democratization of medicine At HP we have the privilege of legacy and leadership in the technology arenas which are needed so urgently in the healthcare industry: microfluidics, measurement, commercial mo- bility, and computing. As the world’s largest microfluidics company we have the know-how, scale, and leverage from our print business by making sophisticated microfluidics cartridges for healthcare diagnostics. Adding micro-scale sensors, precision programmable fluidics and embedded electronic systems to the microfluidic chip to interrogate human biology and interface the biometric data with a device for read-out and data communication are fairly simple to implement. Hence, our unique economy of scale of microfluidics cartridges and global reach have the potential to democratize diagnostics effec- tively. In an ideal world, data will be processed into useful information on-site. The recently released HP Elite X3, is truly the next wave of computing! Turning the Elite X3 into the data center and processing on-site healthcare data into contextual information will enable everyone to access personalized medical information. Health information consolidation, big data an- alytics, and machine learning in the cloud will offer new insights into human health. This will improve healthcare delivery, compliance and treatment outcomes. Precision Medicine will drastically improve quality of life due to an indi- vidualized treatment and recovery rates. Today’s Imprecision Medicine wastes billions of dollars on inappropriate, error prone and ineffective drug administration and treatment (see fig. 4). HP’s vision for healthcare diagnostics Our unique offerings as HP include the high level of vertical integration capabilities and a wide range of assets from microfluidics to commer- cial mobility devices with imaging and compute Edge compute diagnostics democratizes medicine Mounting clip Sample insert HP Elite X3 Sensor Battery Fig. 4: What does the future hold? How about miniature diagnostic labs which attach to smart-devices.