In today's lesson, we learnt more about the BioBusiness in the world, focusing especially on the healthcare and biomedical sciences. Other aspects of BioBusiness include the agricultural and environmental aspects, which will be covered in the following week's lesson.
Unknown to many, myself included, BioBusiness actually makes up a big share (25%) of the world's GDP. Furthermore, BioBusiness' market size in most countries, is larger than 30%, and almost 50% in south asia! of which a lot of the business is excluded because of controversy, such as the beauty aspect and sex traits aspect.
As usual, we started off the class by watching a really interesting video titled 'Health Future Vision' which is about Microsoft's vision of Health Care in the future. The video showed how Health Care can be made much more convenient and efficient through the use of existing and some non-existing technology such as 3-way video-calling, wireless connections, multi-purpose card which scans the user's thumbprint and allows you to choose the card you need electronically.
I'm the video must have been interesting to many but the question that Prof raised, which I also wondered about, is whether this could be possible within the next 10 years? Personally, I am unable to see this happening so soon as it requires everyone to be using the same system in order for this health care system to benefit everyone in the same way. As different people are used to different operating systems, it is a potential obstacle to get everyone to synchronise to one unified system. Also, if all the data required in the health care system is stored in an electronic database, the risk of the system crashing must be kept at the lowest as a large amount of important information are at stake. Hence, there will be a lot of testing and maintenance of the systems required to be done. Therefore, I feel that what is featured in the video seems achievable, however, it will require more than at least 10 years od research and development before it can become reality.
We were also showed another video, which is the trailer for the movie "Sicko" by Michael Moore. This video left a significant impression on me as I was not aware that America's health care/welfare is so poor relative to the wealth they possess. In the video, it was made known that for the richest country in the world, laughter isn't the best medicine, it is the only medicine. It is sad to know that the world's most affluent country is ranked 37th in terms of health care. I sometimes feel that it is ironic for politicians to take such a fat salary, I mean, isn't it their primary objective to look after the citizen's welfare? Why are they bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars home annually while there are people who can't make ends meet to have one proper meal a day? If you can't help these people directly, perhaps providing better health care and welfare for them would be a good way to contribute instead of bring all that money home to build fanciful homes! Then again, the NKF incident has shown that sometimes even if you want to help, there will be some culprits behind the scenes trying to mishandle the money. Eventually, even if a facade is put up to show us that they are helping the poor and hungry, we'll never know where the money went.
As we are discussing the topid of BioBusiness, the first guest speaker this week, Gail Chia shared on Prosthetics and Sports, featuring Oscar Pistorius, a man who became a double amputee at a very young age, aspiring to take part in the Olympics. His application to take part in the 2008 Oylmpics was rejected and he is currently applying to participate in the 2012 Olympics. The reason for the rejection was that his prosthetic legs had springs which deemed it unfair for other runners who had no additional assistance other than their own body. I feel that it is not a matter of fairness but the matter of what they are competing for. Like Prof said, if it is a race between normal people running with their own legs, then only normal people should be allowed to participate in the race. If there is a category for people with prosthetic legs, then only people with prosthetic legs are allowed to take part - this is what Paralympics was set up for, an avenue for people with disabilities to be able to compete in sports among themselves too. Hence, I feel that Oscar Pistorius should not be allowed to compete with able bodied athletes, as that defeats the purpose of having Paralympics and erodes the meaning of Olympics as more and more disabled people would want to compete in the Olympics.
The second speaker, Gavin Low talked about Electronic Skin which is a new form of technology aimed at reducing the need for bulky electronic devices by attaching a skin-like and super thin device to your body. For example, when placed near the throat or heart, it can measure the heart beat and monitor the heart and brain functions, etc. We discussed some disadvantages of electronic skin such as radiation, health concerns, and privacy. I am slightly disturbed by the idea of having something electronic attached to my skin as it feels a little intrusive. However, this may be a good idea for making devices that only require a short amount of contact time. For example, an electronic passport so that travel/immigration process can be made more efficient.
Overall, I rate the lesson 9/10 as I feel that I have learnt a lot more about BioBusiness that I previously did not know and there are actually many interesting insights that I spent time to research about (:
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