New technology marks a key step toward shrinking a medical lab to fit on fingertip is an article published by Princeton University written by Bennett McIntosh. The article published on April 1st, 2019 is about the creation and development of a microchip that can be used to diagnose illness and diseases. The chip itself is about the size of a grain of rice and can be manufactured at a relatively low price because technology wise it is similar to microchips in phones. The chips radiate a certain wavelength of light and can determine aspects about the surrounding area of this chip depending on how the light waves react. A technology such as this could be extremely beneficial for multiple reasons. The chip can help lower the cost of getting a medical diagnosis while also making it faster for the patient to receive their results. Another benefit is that it’s similar to chips already used in phones and therefor can be easily implemented into cellular technology. A final reason I believe these chips can be revolutionary is they can be used anywhere in the world meaning they can be sent to developing counties and the data can be immediately sent to labs in more developed nations for testing.
In my opinion, one of the biggest issues in the United States is the inequity in the quality of healthcare over incomes and demographics. This microchip technology can help to change that because of the fact that is inexpensive to produce. I think it is possible to see these chips being sent out by hospitals and medical facilities through the mail to patients in need. This would help to get rid of medical disparities across the United States because inhabitants in rural areas could easily send their data to hospitals in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, or Houston. The article suggests that the chip could be put inside pills and consumed by people in order to do diagnoses that were before impossible. I do not think that a lot of people will like this. Especially recently with the rise in government conspiracy theories or the fear of authorities many Americans will be hesitant to put a medical device such as this inside their body knowing that it can track countless pieces of data including its location.
In conclusion, I think that possibly the biggest difference this chip can make is in developing countries or places with next to zero medical infrastructure. Chips can be sent to these areas and put into water sources, soil, or even animals in order to test them for their quality than this data can be sent to more advanced labs for processing and evaluation. This technological innovation can make medical diagnoses universal and the evaluation of this data happen for a very low price in a matter of minutes. As the article talks about it would be interesting to see how these chips began to work with modern smart phones.
Link: https://www.princeton.edu/news/2019/04/01/new-technology-marks-key-step-toward-shrinking-medical-lab-fit-fingertip
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