Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

A technology now under development, known as Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC), has the potential to solve these problems. Packaged into a portable, cell-phone-sized device, LOC will allow doctors, nurses, and even patients themselves to take a sample of bodily fluid (such as urine, sputum, or a single drop of blood) and run dozens, if not hundreds, of diagnostics on the spot and in a matter of minutes. “It’s a game-changing technology,” says John T. McDevitt, a Rice University professor of bioengineering and chemistry and an early pioneer in the field. “In the developing world, it will bring reliable health care to billions who don’t currently have it. In the developed world, like here in the US—where medical costs go up another 8 percent every year and 16.5 percent of the economy goes to health care—if personalized medical technologies like the lab-on-a-chip aren’t brought to bear on the situation, we’re going to bankrupt the country.” Another upside to LOC technologies is their ability to gather data. Because these chips are online, the information they collect—like, say, an outbreak of swine flu—can be immediately uploaded to a cloud, where it can be analyzed for deeper patterns. “For the first time,” says McDevitt, “we’ll have access to large quantities of global medical data. This will be crucial in halting the spread of new, emerging diseases and pandemics.” Moreover, LOCs are but one such technology currently in development. According to a 2010 report by PricewaterhouseCoopers, ...