A world sans Doctors?

Samarjit Kambam *

A lady doctor examining the eyes of an elderly woman during a free medical camp at Lower Khoirentak in January 2013 :: Pix - Hueiyen Lanpao

Its hard to imagine a world without doctors. To patients they are tantamount to saviours in flesh and blood. Where will we go when we become sick, ill or injured? Consulting and getting attended, getting help and advice from a doctor at a hospital or a clinic is the first priority. In fact a doctor is a demi-god for a sick, ill, person with physical or mental disorders or a terminally ill patient.

With change of time the medical world is also changing rapidly. It is a historical fact that during ancient times crude instruments were used for surgery and other kinds of operations by surgeons. Even whiskey was consumed by the patient as anesthesia during those times. The invention of the stethoscope revolutionised the medical world which the doctors, physicians or medical practitioners solely depend.

Then came the X-Ray, ECG, colonoscope, endoscope, ultrasound machine, CT Scan, MRI, state of the art anesthetic equipments etc. Even Apple's iPad is increasingly finding use in health and medicine, with applications ranging from giving individuals instant access to a wealth of personal health information, Gradually the medical world is relying heavily on many technical instruments and machines and the dependency on machines by the people associated with the medical world is increasing with each passing day.

Since a single doctor cannot carry out all the various procedures such as blood tests, handling anesthetic equipment and other equipments over and above surgery or operation at one go, there arose X-Ray Technicians, Anesthetists, Blood bank technicians and other technicians to handle various medical equipments.

Human's imagination can be stretched beyond limit. With imagination comes out ideas and ideas get materialised in the form of inventions. In the movie 'Prometheus', the female protagonist frantically enters inside a medi-pod where a surgery for removal of foreign object from her body was carried out by the machine through voice command. Even though it is only a science fiction movie, it gives a clear message to the viewers about the possibility of a surgery or operation being carried out at a person by a machine in the absence of a doctor or doctors.

The movie 'Elysium' also has a crystal clear message where a mother places her terminally ill daughter whose days are numbered in a chambered machine where 're-structuring of atoms' was carried out inside her body and her disease or disorder was cured within a short duration. It shows the application of nanotechnology where the manipulation of matter takes place at the atomic and molecular level to create materials with remarkably varied and new properties and is becoming a rapidly expanding area of research in healthcare.

In medicine, it promises to revolutionise drug delivery, gene therapy, diagnostics, and many areas of research, development and clinical application. It is a known fact that robots now dominate many leading bio-science laboratories, doing in just hours what once took days or weeks by humans. Now the convergence of automation with nanotechnologies, bio-medics and advanced algorithms promises to take robotisation of medical research to greater heights.

Wearable health technology is also drawing serious attention in the mass media and for good reason. Such devices will likely transform medical care in unimagined ways, turning science fiction in science fact. The latest wearable health gadgets sport new capabilities giving a promising future to mankind. From headsets that measure brainwaves to clothes that incorporate sensing devices, personal health monitoring is the wave of the future.

A few years ago it was hard to believe that such things would become a reality. Likewise the advancement taking place in the medical world at present and what is possible and happening vividly today were thought as impossible in the past. But the impossible becomes possible with the passage of time due to mankind's endless quest for knowledge.

Now interactive classrooms are in vogue and in the near future the kiddies will accrue scores of knowledge about the human body and medical knowhow within the high school level than what we did. As the classes get more interactive with new technology, three-dimensional images will replace the two dimensional ones. The knowledge inculcated on them will far exceed the preceding generations.

During that time our present generation may be considered like a 'Jurrasic era' and phrases such as 'patient-doctor relationship' might get unknown and unheard of. Only terminology of new machines would crop up - machines that do not require a doctor. Course such machines will come at a price and only an affluent few would be able to keep them at home. But for those who cannot afford also, persons sick or healthy, those who want to carry out a surgery or an operation or those who wish to undergo a thorough medical check-up would also get access to such machines kept at public places just like ATM booths by giving the procedural expenses with the swipe of a debit/credit card or mastercard to the machine.

If you are a doctor, a physician or any person related to the medical profession, you may be fuming with rage as to who the heck this writer is to make procrastinations. Well I am not Nostradamus, nor am I an astrologer, nor a palmist, nor a fortune teller, nor a person with extra sensory perception. I am just a lousy guy simply expressing my thoughts and views. Even though it may not happen exactly the way as mentioned, the possibility is quite high.

Citing a simple example, lets start from a pager getting replaced by keypad cellphone and evolving to non-keypad touchscreen cellphone, then to a tablet, a phablet, a smartphone with newer version of android-based apps and now the time has come for holographic based apps. Just like the way all the living creatures on planet earth are evolving, the machines are also collaterally evolving but at a faster pace.

In the near future, the corporate bodies and multinationals will be the ones that will reap the ripest monetary harvest by producing advanced medical equipments and the competition among them will be cut-throat or high beyond words. Such corporate entities will be producing machines in such a way that they will get sold in the open market, purchased by ones who desperately need it, and the rest of the procedures like scanning or surgery carried out by the machine itself followed by a printed list of medicines churning out from the machine if required.

We can paint a picture in our minds of an armless person going inside a shop, buying a robotic prosthetic arm among various others most suited to him, attaching it to the remaining part of his armless limb with the help of the shopkeeper and then whistling all the way to the nearest basketball court to play basketball. Recently there was a sensational news where electrical device helped paralytic men move their legs at a laboratory in Kentucky Spinal Chord Research Centre, Louisville, United States. More sensational news will be cropping up in the days to come also as medical researches are being carried out by different nations of the world, some through collaborations and exchange of technologies while some carrying out clandestinely.

Nowadays the public possess handy instruments where they can monitor their own blood pressure, sugar level, pregnancy tests etc without going to a doctor. A person goes to an optical centre for a medical check-up of the eyes and come out with a pair of glasses as per the health and condition of the eyes of the individual without consulting a doctor as all the required procedures were carried out by advanced computerised machine. So with each passing day we will be relying more and more on machines and instruments and less on doctors. After a few centuries the occupation of 'doctor' may be unheard of and our great great grandchildren may be witnessing a world devoid of doctors.

This article will definitely ignite the ire of doctors and people in the medical world just like opening the pandora's box of an uncertain future in medical profession. But the uncertainty will be very certain.