This is Bertalan Mesko and you are watching the channel of the Medical Futurist.

Every year, I come up with a list of trends

and technologies that I think will shape the coming year in medicine and healthcare. I

don't like to call these predictions, rather I call them extrapolations form today's trends.

I try to choose those research directions which might make the biggest impact on our

lives in the coming year. So let's see the list right now.

Organ-on-a-chip technique might be available in the year 2015 which mean that we might

soon be able to create the first virtual model of the human body making it possible to run

drug tests on billions of patient models in seconds with supercomputers.

In the coming year, digital tattoos as thin as two micrometers might become available

making it the ultimate sensor. So I don't have to use all these gadgets around myself

to measure my health data but with one very thin digital tattoo, I could measure whatever

I would like to measure. Well, while the year of 2014 was the year

of the wearable health trackers, 2015 will be the year of smart clothes. T-shirts and

trousers which will be able to measure our health parameters in the most convenient way.

The first medical tricorders will come to the market due to the XPrize challenges. Little

devices that by scanning the body would come up with a few simple diagnostic options.

IBM supercomputer named Watson as a cognitive computer will be used in more and more medical

practices worldwide and more and more hospitals will buy that as an actual asset to the medical

decision making process. A company called Theranos will revolutionize

blood tests by making it available with just one droplet of blood at Walmarts around the

US. Food scanning is coming at home with a company

called Tellspec. We will be able to finally know what ingredients our food contains.

Augmented reality will move away from Google Glass more towards the first digital contact

lenses that can measure blood glucose levels from tears as an added benefit.

The first 3D printed biomaterials will become mainstream due to the company's efforts called

Organovo. Next year, the first liver tissues printed out in 3D will be used by pharmaceutical

companies. Empowered patients will attend more and more medical

conferences, they will speak at these conferences and more and more e-patients will be included

in editorial boards of peer reviewed journals. Direct-to-consumer companies in genomics will

deal with the challenges FDA will come up with and we will move towards very cheap whole

genome sequencing. Although the cost will not be zero next year, but we will get closer

to my prediction about the fact that the shipping cost of the sample will be higher than actually

sequencing the genome. In areas with doctor shortages, telemedicine

will be used at its best. Moreover, the first force-feedback gloves will come to the market

making it possible to even feel the handshake form a distance, even from continents away

while discussing medical issues through telemedical applications.

Prosthetics will become more sophisticated and much much cheaper due to the 3D printing

revolution. And I think that the first brain-computer interfaces will be used in practice, plus

we will more and more be able to measure our brain activities; and to learn how to be relaxed

or how to be focused at home. Please share which trends you like the most

and what other trends you have in mind about the year 2015 and please share these the Facebook

page of The Medical Futurist! Thank you!