You’re walking through the city. Suddenly, your high-tech wearable says your blood pressure is skyrocketing and sends a warning to your physician. Luckily, it’s nothing serious and your pressure returns to normal. This is the future of preventative healthcare. Besides blood pressure monitors, expect to see wearables that monitor your heart rate, respiration and temperature, bracelets that combat sleep apnoea, and gadgets that identify skin cancer. Preventative healthcare helps us keep an eye on warning signs and enables us to take charge, prevent serious health problems and significantly reduce healthcare costs.

Digital technology has advanced so much that it makes sense to consider it for improved patient care, cost savings, and increased efficiency. Digital healthcare tech can improve patient monitoring and help reduce physicians' workload, so they can spend more time with patients. Digital care comes in all shapes and sizes. Think surgical robots that assist human surgeons, pharmacy robots that collect and dispense medication, IV-robots that prepare and deliver IV mixtures, exoskeletons – wearable robotic structures – that help with rehabilitation, and telemedicine robots that enable physicians to connect with their patients remotely.

Intelligent digital tech fuses the physical, biological and digital worlds. It changes what it means to be human – and what it means to heal humans. And when it comes to healing and technology, there’s mind blowing developments. Think nanorobots – miniature surgeons, if you will – that can be used to repair damaged cells, perform targeted drug delivery, or monitor diabetes in the body. Or bioprinters that can print personalised medication and even entire organs for transplantation. And neurotechnology can help patients with neurodegenerative diseases to regain some mobility.

Artificial intelligence (AI) plays an important role in providing medical professionals with real-time clinical and medical knowledge to reach diagnoses and formulate treatment plans. AI, combined with wearables and other medical devices, is already used in the early detection of diseases like cancer and heart disease. It’s only a matter of time before doctors will also be able to diagnose chronic conditions faster, using AI, 3D-imaging technology and pattern recognition tech. And soon, physicians will even be able to prescribe treatment before a disease has manifested itself.

The future of humans is linked to advanced medical tech that will enables us to repair, replace or enhance almost every part of the body, like our kidneys, heart, lungs, muscles, skin, limbs, and eyes. In the future, we can connect our brains to machines and augment our mental and physical abilities. Human bodies will probably contain at least one – if not more – technologically engineered parts. We will likely have infallible memory, new senses – like echolocation – and body extensions in objects located far away.

As healthcare costs continue to skyrocket, hospitals and care homes are looking for ways to leverage technology to minimise in-patient services and improve patient care and efficiency. Think smart, centralised virtual centres or micro-hospitals offering digital patient experience and on-demand interaction. But also robots and automated systems that enable caregivers more time with their patients. Cyber-proofing hospitals and care homes of the future will be critical, as security breaches – due to the proliferation of digital technologies – can be a major threat.

In many ways, people are no longer separate from technology. It is, therefore, important to keep an eye on the moral side of technological developments. We need to philosophize about the implications for the world of tomorrow and ensure we take important ethical considerations into account. We need to determine our boundaries and have (and voice) opinions about how people and machines should work together. What will happen to our individual rights and how will we deal with privacy and risk management? How will we remain happy in the world of tomorrow?

As hospitals implement advanced technologies and innovations, the roles and functions of healthcare staff will be significantly impacted. Healthcare staff will need to develop digital skills to navigate an increasingly data-rich healthcare environment. Staff will also need to focus on continuous learning through online courses and VR/AR simulations. This changing and increasingly augmented healthcare workforce will need to learn how to manage AI processes and work alongside robots. New specialist fields will emerge, such as digital medicine, genomics, artificial intelligence and surgical robotics.

The future of work requires a new type of manager, one who challenges the status quo and is willing to abandon 20th century ‘best practices’. There will be a move to flatter hierarchies as millennials are great team players and see traditional hierarchies as outdated. They are result-driven and expect their managers to be the same. The managers of the future offer employees opportunities to develop new skills and explore new positions.

The company of the future is hyper connected. It closely monitors new developments and collaborates with startups, scientists and universities. It uses smart algorithms to analyse the world and employs a flexible workforce capable of rapidly developing new products, services or processes, and offering support on complex issues. The company of the future requires accessible leaders who inspire, have new visions and are prepared to veer off the beaten track.

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