Our average life expectancy has increased from 45 years in the 1850s to nearly 80 years today as a result of medical science. Researchers believe that our life spans will continue to grow, but there is an eventual hard limit.
Advances in medicine that are driving this lengthening life span range across a vast spectrum, including diagnostic developments, medical devices, prescription drugs, and procedures. These medical interventions are joined with healthier lifestyles, a more holistic approach to medicine, and more accurate and earlier diagnoses.
We will take a look at how medical science and technological advances have contributed to our lengthening lifespans.
Healthy Lifestyles and Life Expectancy
We are increasingly more conscious of the need to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Such a lifestyle comes in the form of improved diet and nutrition, exercising regularly, maintaining our mental and emotional health, and regularly assessing our health.
The healthy lifestyle trends that started with the 1970s running craze and subsequent 80s aerobics craze have more recently grown into fitness and healthcare wearables that allow consumers to monitor their personal health–keeping track of steps, activity, sleep, heart rate, stress, and other vital signs.
The IDC predicts that the total wearable market will grow at a rate of 13.4% in the next five years, with an expected 219.4 million units being sold in 2022.
The wearables of today span multiple medical and health functions, from fitness trackers to smart health watches, including wearable ECG devices, and blood pressure monitors, biosensors, and more. These devices can collect physical and medical data with various levels of usefulness. They can monitor, analyse, and even predict health and mental well-being when paired with mobile and desktop applications.
The covid pandemic accelerated a growing trend toward telehealth and remote monitoring. This trend can be leveraged to move us in the direction of preventative healthcare for conditions such as heart disease and stroke.
There are now several wearable makers in the healthcare space, including Interplex, that has been a supplier to many manufacturers and disruptive wearable companies. They have a diabetes monitoring system that can help keep patients’ blood sugar levels more standard.
Wearables and Health Diagnoses
Wearables are no longer new to the market, and their usefulness and quality have consistently improved. They collect multiple data points related to one’s health, and when applying professional analysis to the collected data, they are now able to make early detection possible, which helps with disease prevention and in proposing better treatments. Currently, medical laboratories are providing up to 70% of lab testing to physicians in order to provide accurate diagnoses and treatment plans.
Clinical lab testing results for diagnostic decision-making are an essential part of clinical medicine. The selection of laboratory tests available to doctors has grown exponentially since they first surfaced in the 1920s. Now a wide array of tests can diagnose, screen for, and research disease, while others can monitor treatments and therapies to ensure effectiveness. It is now possible to design tests and equipment that fit the exact specifications needed for medical diagnosis, and this has moved into the area of genetic diseases.
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