Citation
Olshansky, S. Jay; Carnes, Bruce A.; Yang, Yang Claire; Miller, Norvell; Anderson, Janet; Beltrán-Sánchez, Hiram; & Ricanek, Karl, Jr. (2016). The Future of Smart Health. Computer, 49(11), 14-21.Abstract
Human health has been tracked using various metrics since the advent of the demographic and actuarial sciences several centuries ago. Epidemiologists, sociologists, gerontologists, and public health experts have since become highly efficient at determining when in the lifespan diseases tend to emerge, what behavioral and genetic risk factors contribute to their onset and progression, how to treat them once discovered, and how basic biology influences both disease expression and length of life. In fact, during the 20th century, scientific, medical, and public health advances drove the first longevity revolution in the US: a more than 30-year increase in life expectancy at birth. However, statistics do not capture what is actually happening inside our bodies. This became possible with advanced diagnostic and imaging technologies—including x-rays, positron emission and computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalograms, electrocardiograms, and laparoscopic surgery—that enable physicians to not only observe disease after symptoms appear but increasingly to detect disease before symptoms are manifest, when intervention is most effective. For example, a routine colonoscopy can sharply reduce the risk of death from colon cancer, once a major cause of mortality in long-lived populations.1 Yet, despite our newfound success in real-time disease tracking, there are still no physiological measures that can reliably and precisely determine biological age.2URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MC.2016.336Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2016Journal Title
ComputerAuthor(s)
Olshansky, S. JayCarnes, Bruce A.
Yang, Yang Claire
Miller, Norvell
Anderson, Janet
Beltrán-Sánchez, Hiram
Ricanek, Karl, Jr.