The impact of medical technologies on the future of hospitals

During the next decade diseases requiring medical intervention will be much the same as those being treated today. The site of care may, however, be moved away from the community general hospital to a non-hospital site or to a specialty hospital at a distance. Thanks to technological advances, procedures that once were performed in hospitals are now done in free standing facilities, accelerating a trend that began in the United States in the 1980s. Hospitals will become places that treat conditions that cannot be treated in other settings.

As a result of these developments, this article in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) envisages the following:

• Pharmaceuticals will replace some procedures and will decrease the need for admission to hospital, and newer vaccines will treat as well as prevent disease.
• Minimally invasive surgery will reduce hospital stay and promote outpatient operations.
• Sensors will change central laboratories and intensive care units of today.
• Digitised images will be accessible to all clinicians.
• Xenotransplantation from transgenic pigs is ever more likely.
• Economics and superior outcomes will favour specialty hospitals.

[adapted from author]