Technological progress continues to yield a smaller footprint and greater ease of access to systems and their corresponding information. Some of its more remarkable advances focus on medical information technology. Three major technological pushes will revolutionize the way we and most of the world access medical testing and information. Those technological advances are Lab on a Chip (LOC), Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS), and Mobile Sensor Medical Scanners.

Lab-on-a-Chip products seek to reduce the support systems needed to run medical diagnostics that require laboratory testing. The technology simplifies and automates laboratory testing by using capillary action to make use of tiny amounts of blood, or other testing materials, to run a full disease or chemical test automatically. Early models are one-shot strips, chips and cassettes that allow for the mass production of testing materials. Newer models feature modular components, electronic controls, and connectivity for digital processing and analysis. Such devices will continue to shrink in size and increase effectiveness with the hope that full laboratory analysis suites will become modular components of mobile medical scanners or personal cellular telephones.

Clinical Decision Support Systems will hopefully make their greatest impact in the regions that need healthcare the most, as billions around the world currently lack access to medical care and particularly medical expertise. The advancements of artificial intelligence (AI) that process natural language, such as the speaking interfaces of cellphones or, more impressively, the IBM Watson system that won games of Jeopardy by reading through Wikipedia articles, are becoming the basis of systems that can quickly interpret and diagnose patient illnesses and issues with greater speed and accuracy. The real advantage is that computer systems have to be a one-to-one model. A single CDSS could support thousands of patients across thousands of miles as diagnostic data are fed into a cellphone or mobile scanner with cellular data access, processed, and returned to even the most remote locations. This could change the lives of billions, saving time and money by avoiding long arduous trips, and providing access to required medical services while bypassing lengthy diagnostics steps.

Mobile medical scanners, once a dream of science fiction, can be both a culmination of the prior technologies and a new technology itself. The current front-runners of this technological push are the result of an Xprize founded to attempt a functional recreation of the Star Trek Medical Tricorder. Backed by Qualcomm, the contest currently has 10 finalists vying for the prize, but the technology won’t end with them. Whoever the winner, this technology stands to streamline modern medical diagnostics with replacements to current medical tools used by healthcare staff and by encouraging a move to modular personal tools used by individuals at home.

Whatever the result of the individual advances, these three technologies will help to simplify and automate current medical processes, bring better quality of life, and improve business practices for groups that implement them.