The 21st Century Physician: Technology is Changing, Why Aren’t We?

We will see a future that involves the use of artificial intelligence, personalized medicine, 3-D printing, virtual reality, and many other disruptive technologies that will dominate the future of health care.

Our belief as future physicians is that we must innovate and harness future technology for the benefit of patients. Although our plates are full as medicals students, we believe that physicians in training should take the lead in developing new health care technologies through collaboration with other disciplines, such as engineering, computer science, and commerce.

We decided that we wanted to be part of this movement, so we started a student interest group called Technology in Medicine.

The goal of the Technology in Medicine group is to highlight, advance, and implement medical innovation at the University of Saskatchewan. As great as the medical curriculum is, at the present time little time is devoted to addressing technologies that may benefit us as practicing physicians in the future.

We have networked with current medical and engineering organizations such as Med.Hack, SaskInvent, Innovation Enterprise, and even off-campus networks such as those at the University of Calgary. The plan is to organize workshops, demonstrations, and presentations by professors in various disciplines such as engineering, medicine, and computer science. Partnerships with other student organizations for hosting events will help increase the collaboration between the colleges.

Special interest groups allow students to explore and develop other areas of being a physician. The current medical curriculum prepares us to become clinicians, academics, and researchers, but it is up to us to take the initiative if we aspire to branch out and become innovators and entrepreneurs in the health care field.

Learn more about Richard Ngo and Brandon Spink's concussion hack invention that won first place in Med.Hack(+) 2019.