Nothing in healthcare seems to remain the same for longer than a year. Whether it’s a new trend or a new piece of tech, the way that medical professionals are working is constantly updated, with exciting innovations that make the healthcare process safer, easier, and far more efficient year-on-year.
A lot of the time, however, the inventions are not expected. For instance, did anyone see seaweed making an impact in healthcare this year? We certainly didn’t. But it did. And that’s pretty cool!
In fact, there have been a load of interesting and unique healthcare tools that have been making an impact in 2023. It’s impossible to go through all of them, so we’ve selected a handful to tell you about and walk through what makes them so important:
Content Table
The Surgical Retractor
We’ll start off with something a little easier to believe: medical retractors have been on the healthcare scene for a while now, but this year, they were supplied to 1,600 US hospitals, demonstrating how much of an impact they have had on the surgery process.
The tool itself is known as Galaxy II, and it’s an award-winning invention that holds an incision or wound open, freeing the surgeon’s hands and making the operation safer and more efficient as a result.
Seaweed Sensors
We mentioned earlier that even seaweed has been making waves in the healthcare industry this year, and it has been doing so through nanomaterial, wearable technology.
This is a nanocomposite seaweed that has created an accurate sensor to track blood pressure, breathing, joint movement, and the pulse, all in real-time. Although it is not being used worldwide just yet, the device has garnered a lot of excitement in the industry, and it is likely to be an innovation that sticks around for the future.
The Blood Patch
Just as the medical retractor makes incisions easier to access for surgeons, so too has this invention by scientists at the University of Huddersfield: a patch device that increases the size and visibility of veins to take blood or insert a cannula.
For patients who have veins that are difficult to access, most medical professionals need to use an ultrasound to access neck veins instead, which is a risky and expensive procedure. The blood patch, however, can identify and increase the size of targeted veins in half a minute!
Medical Trends In The Future
Other interesting and exciting innovations include a multi-system approach to breast cancer treatment, disease detection in real-time, and new antibiotics for Gram-positive bacteria. But there are many more to look into and understand, no matter whether their impact is being felt or still in the development stage.
Several medical innovations – both tools and technology – find their way into the healthcare industry every year, and all of them prioritise two integral things: safety and efficiency. As AI tech also begins to build, it’s likely that we’ll see more life than ever breathed into these values over the next few years, helping to make both the patient and the professional experience far smoother.
