Essay Example on the 4th Industrial Revolution: Impact on Healthcare Systems

How will today's healthcare systems change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution? In the modern world, there have been rapid changes in innovations and science, and hence, confluent industrial revolutions. This has been a point of concern, especially in healthcare, drawing much attention in the health system.

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Industrial revolution refers to the process of industrialization and innovations, basically described with changes in the industrial sectors and technological levels. The industrial revolution is said to have taken place since the 17th century up to date. It is believed to have started in Britain and has rapidly spread out through the world. This was termed as the first industrial revolution. Later, in the 1820s, there emerged the second industrial revolution, that is, the American industrial revolution. This second industrial revolution was characterized by mechanization in agriculture as well as in textile manufacturing, and power, (railroads and steamships) resulting in great changes in social and economic systems. Towards the mid-19th century, the industrial revolution had spread throughout the world with many inventions being made. Furthermore, there were numerous advancements in these inventions. This led to a great impact in several sectors, for example, the world economy, education sector, transport and communication, business and commerce, and healthcare. The previous industrial revolutions released mankind from the restrain of animal power and digitalized capabilities of many people in the world. The fourth industrial revolution is, however, much different. It refers to an industrial revolution characterized by a wide range of new technologies and inventions in which the physical, digital and biological worlds are infused to bring out huge effects in the world systems and even to induce more innovations and challenging ideas to revolutionize the whole world (Colombo et al. 2017). The fourth industrial revolution results in disruptions and shifts that improve efficiency in the world to ensure digitalized network connectivity of people, organizations efficiency, natural environment regeneration as well as asset management. Over the past century, huge steps have been made in different health and healthcare facets. In 1900, healthcare was characterized by antiseptic surgery, use of antibiotics, among other relatively low innovations in comparison to the 20th century. In the current 20th century, described as the fourth industrial revolution, the healthcare sector has been characterized by genome editing with new science and innovations driving a substantial improvement in the health sector. These developments have had a great impact on the healthcare, for instance, new medicines for different diseases, the discovery of more diseases, effective management of chronic illnesses, empowerment of patients to take greater responsibilities in healthcare, improved healthcare research, etc. The question of how will today's healthcare systems change in the Fourth Industrial Revolution is well discussed below.

Generally, the fourth industrial revolution will have a huge impact on healthcare. This is as a result of technological and biological infusion in the MedTech sector. Every industry is said to be part of the change in the fourth industrial revolution, for instance, business and commerce, agriculture, education, etc., and therefore, the healthcare sector will not be an exception. The impact of future breakthrough is, therefore predicted to be huge and significant and will be intensively felt. There are expectations of massive benefits from the fourth industrial revolution in the health care sector, with a more positive outlook.

In the fourth industrial revolution, there will be medical breakthroughs in biotechnology. This will be beneficial to the patients and hence, a vital step in the healthcare sector. Biotechnology, which can be described as biological processes exploitation, in relation to organisms, cells, and cellular components in the process of technological development, will be a big development step in the fourth industrial revolution. It will be significant in the improvement of knowledge about innovations and transformative therapies. This will be incorporated in genetic engineering, regenerative medicine, and immunotherapy. Genetic engineering, which is precisely genetic material manipulation with the use of biotechnology knowledge and applications, will be an expected development in the fourth industrial revolution. This will involve gene therapy, which is the process of providing functional copies of defective genes that causes genetic diseases, gene editing, which is described as the process of adding, deleting or altering of genes in patients to enhance the completeness of genetic materials in organisms, and exon skipping which refers to the skipping of genetic mutation in the genes during the transcription process (Lee and Lim 2017).. The process of genetic engineering will be a major revolutionary step since many human diseases, approximated to be more than 10,000 sources from genetic mutations. However, only a few of these genes caused diseases can be treated by the provision of synthetic versions of proteins that are believed to be missing. In the fourth industrial revolution, we have had successes and promises in healthcare in reference to genetic engineering. For instance, diseases like hemoglobinopathies have had positive treatment information. Haemoglobinopathies, which is said to be caused by abnormal production of hemoglobin resulting from monogenic defects have had positive treatment processes. Most patients are treated with chronic transfusion support and supportive care. More so, new techniques that involve the use of viral vectors have shown positive results in the attempts of globin gene replacements. This has reduced the cases of red blood cell transfusions requirements. Another significant step involves the modification of patients owns stem cells to produce significant levels of fetal hemoglobin. Other progress in genetic engineering is positive treatment processes in retinal dystrophy and Duchenne muscular dystrophy diseases.

Genetic engineering has also been important in the fourth industrial revolution era in the improvement and restoration of homeostasis processes through regenerative medicine and stem cells. This has been more effective due to the feasibility of genetic engineering. Regenerative medicine has improved the healthcare by the potentiality of healing damaged organs and tissues hence offering a transformative approach to healthcare. It has the potential to offer not only disease curative advantage but also treatment in conditions that may seem to be beyond repair. Regenerative medicine has been important through facilitating regrowth, repair, or replacement of diseased or damaged body tissues, organs, or cells (Park 2016). Nonetheless, in the fourth industrial revolution, there has been widespread use of live cell-based therapies in medicine hence improving healthcare. Example of successes in the regenerative medicine is the restoration of homeostasis of the immune system through the use of autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplant that can be down even to outpatients after high dosage chemotherapy. The importance of hematopoietic stem cell is to aid the patients to recover from tissue damage and side effects from the high dosage chemotherapy. Another importance of regenerative medicine is the regenerative medicine in neurology and restoration of skin homeostasis.

In the fourth industrial revolution, new technologies will enhance the discovery of new medicines to treat different diseases. Generally, there are vast of human diseases in the world. Some of these diseases have no medicine to offer treatment to patients. Biological innovations that are emerging in the nascent revolution will enhance the invention of medicines to treat a mass of diseases and improve the healthcare sector. Advances in medicinal knowledge and biometrics technology developments in the current industrial revolution are poised to enhance the invention of new medicines that will treat and cure patients faster and more efficiently. There are also positive expectations of inventions of curative drugs and vaccinations for various diseases to promote the health status of human beings. For instance, genetic engineering has incorporated medical applications like recombinant DNA drugs and transgenic animals that are able to produce pharmaceutically useful proteins.

Immunotherapy is another expected change in the fourth industrial revolution in health care. Immunotherapy, which is described as the process of treatment of diseases through inducement, enhancement, and suppressant of an immune response. Immunotherapy has positively progressed for the past 10-15 years to become a rapidly expanding treatment process to represent the 5th modality of cancer therapy with surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and biological therapies leading in that order respectively. It is in the current fourth industrialization era that research and innovations have discovered that cell biology and cancer research have shown the ability of the immune system to exclude cancer cells that occur naturally through a process called immunosurveillance. This has been a significant change in the health care sector (Chang and Choi, 2016). More so, over the past four years, many immunotherapy drugs and indications have been approved in the United States. Nonetheless, the expected changes are that further technological and biological research is being carried out to realize and offer a prediction of the patients to benefit from these therapies as well as realizing the resistant mechanisms involved and the best times to put these therapies into the application. The further expected outcomes are that immunotherapy will be the cornerstone of oncology and will be applied in most types of cancer.

Throughout the fourth industrial revolution, the new technologies and innovations will enhance the effective management of chronic illnesses by physicians. Advances in life sciences and technological inventions are predicted to enhance the efficient management of chronic diseases that are more frequent in human health. The convergence of biological inventions and biological research revolutions in the fourth industrial revolution has been perceived to help physicians to be able to diagnose illnesses more efficiently and faster as well as be in a position to apply personalized treatment plans. It will also be easy for the physicians to monitor the progress of patients under treatment at the real-time hence help in the treatment process of the patients. Furthermore, there will be an improvement in patients' supervision and the application of personalized treatment plans. For instance, the process of digitalizing the immune system will enhance the application of personalized medicine while biometric devices will help in filling the gaps between physicians' consultations. This will be important in early treatments and the prevention of chronic diseases. This will be a significant change in the health sector.

Conclusion

The fourth industrial revolution is characterized by massive network connectivity in the whole world. There is a wide range of universal connectivity. The internet of medical things is another positive step of concern. It encompasses a network of devices connected that are sensitive to vital data in real-time. This has developed as a result of network development of wireless sensor-based systems. The internet of medical things (IoMT) has been beneficial as in healthcare applications, for instance through supporting clinical decisions and has aided in reducing incorrect diagnosis and hence improving the quality of healthcare services through monitoring...