Session 6:

Today’s session was about the Biobusiness with focus on healthcare and biomedical sciences. The session started with a great Greek proverb: “A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.” This is an inspiring proverb especially in the 21^st century whereby businesses and society has been looking for sustainable technology. Hence, with the usage of sustainable technology now, our future generation can gain benefits which we may have never experienced.

With this in mind, we moved on to knowing more about bio businesses. BioBusiness makes about quarter of the world’s GDP and also employees a little less than half the workforce. This shows the extent to which BioBusiness is present in our world today. Furthermore, even these figures are under estimates because many businesses like beauty, skincare, sex trade which constitutes of BioBusiness are not included in the figures. Currently however, most BioBusinesses are to do with low-value added activities yet, with biotechnology, these low value added technologies can be converted to high value added technologies and I believe that this is what we should strive for because with biotechnology now, our future generation is bound to enjoy better products and services.

With Biobusiness comes healthcare. It is ironic that in the past when many people did not move about, most people used to die due to communicable diseases. Yet, in the world of globalization, people are now dying due to non-communicable diseases. By 2020, it is estimated that countries will focus more on non-communicable diseases which will again lead to increase in deaths from communicable diseases. In my opinion, it is important for medical businesses and governments to strike a balance and not just focus on one type of disease.

Some of the main key takeaways for this lesson were through the video: Microsoft Vision: Future of Healthcare.  Microsoft believes that in the future, doctors will be able to communicate with other doctors in any part of the world regarding some patients illness. Furthermore, they can also use new technologies for diagnosis. Although it is sure to make the life of doctors easy, there is also a very scary part. What happens then to patients privacy? How about if the machines are wrong? Will the doctors who depend so much on them be able to adapt in such a situation? Hence, I believe that nothing should be left entirely on machines but we as humans should also be careful and should know much more than machines.

With this in mind, I would like to have further discussions on the negative impacts of using technology in the medical sector.

My personal rating for this session would be 8. I am not particularly interested in medical sciences but this lesson really helped me see medical in a very different perspective like the Greek Poverb.