Innovations and Technologies for Health and
Wellness
Martin Hernandez
1
, Christian Juhra
2
, Andre Kushniruk
3
, Elizabeth Borycki
3
, and Kendall Ho
4
ITecnol6gico de Monterrey, Monterrey, Mexico
2Universitätsklinikum Münster, Münster, Germany
3University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada
4University ofBritish Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Abstract-The technological revolution of the 21st Century
has been impressive and mind boggling. It has a major impact in
all the fields, but probably one with a highest impact is health. If
we connect the speed impact and transformation of the
technology with the importance for society of wellness and health
and the millennial vision of here and now, instant responses open
tremendous opportunities for technology to deliver the benefits
that the individuals are looking for. Three basic concepts are
fundamental elements that make health and well-being a specific
target for technology to develop tools and processes of
information evaluation and gathering that can make a difference
in every human life. These 3 fundamental concepts of our human
bodyare:
1- Structure
2- Function
3- Variations
Having thorough technology to gather information from
anthropometrics to body composition all the way through the
nano level have created potent tools to observe the healthy
parameters as weil as the deviations that can signal the presence
of a disease. The same applies for the physiology from the basics
of organ and systems measurements to their interaction with
biomechanics and molecular biology, genomics, proteomics that
help to understand pathways, energy use and how to measure the
evidence of an appropriate function to signify health. And finally,
understanding that life models do not follow our rigid process for
its outputs and throughputs and these variations can be analyzed
and interpreted through statistics and bioinformatics to defy the
ranges where health and wellness are present and the deviations
that the disease produces. My intention is to show you several
examples and applications where we can find the importance of
this modeling to develop the tools and technologies that will
benefit human kind in the following decades.
I. I NTRODUCTION
It is a fact that any of us can recognize that wellness and
health are one of the top agendas for the individuals of the 21 st
century. Its relevance will continue to grow with the world' s
view and its individual view that millennials have today. This
will continue to grow exponentially as this generation ages and
they start developing health complications and behavior
modification that affects their view ofITS NOW AND WHA T
IS IN IT FOR ME. Some reports indicate that the wellness
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industry is being transformed by technology, and some analysis
showed aglobai value of 12 billion dollars in this industries. If
we look at reports of frrms such as Frost & Sullivan, the top
health and wellness technology for 2015 across the
pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry indicate
innovations in diagnosis, prognosis and therapies in diseases
like cancer, cardiovascular, chronic lifestyle diseases &
neurological conditions. Then if we connect the growth of
these needs and the tremendous transformation that technology
and engineering are doing on its own, vast and unexplored
opportunities are going to be conquered in the following years.
Based on the capacities of the application of these systems,
devices and technologies that analyze each specific problem
and opportunity the basic variables that are key to understand
the human body and how to measure and recognize the
deviations of health and therefore establish patterns to prevent
the diseases and maintain the highest performance in our
human body.
11 . DATA ANAL YSIS AND SELECTED PROBLEMS APPROACH
To be able to assess the importance of the top Health and
Wellness Technologies in 2015, it is important to understand
the trends in life sciences and the evolution of technology and
devices to acquire data on: Structure, Function and Variations.
Regarding the Trends, there are 6 key elements to consider in
order to identify the most important opportunities:
1- One size fits all approach does not work.
2- Create value and lower cost.
3- Revisiting alternative therapies - Progress in technology
has given new life to old strategies.
4- Convergence as a transformative element for healthcare.
This is best represented by bioinformatics and genomics.
5- Healthcare is moving towards being more patient-centric.
6- Biosimilars developing as alternate therapies
As an example, the Frost & Sullivan report identifies,
through a systematic evaluation process, the top ten health and
wellness technologies in 2015.
DMIAF 2016