In fact, connection and community are essential human needs, right up there with the Four Fs: feeding (to stay alive), flight, fight (to avoid being eaten), and fornication (to keep the species going). “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”
—Niels Bohr
H omo sapiens appeared on planet Earth at least 300,000 years ago and has evolved as a species that values connection. In fact, connection and community are essential human needs, right up there with the Four Fs: feeding (to stay alive), flight, fight (to avoid being eaten), and fornication (to keep the species going).
However, over the last century, humans have plundered the planet with unprecedented population growth, abused and overstrained our food production and supply systems, and have become increasingly sedentary and disconnected from the way of life by which we developed and evolved over 300 millennia. And our collective health and lifespan have suffered terribly as a consequence.
Consider this: Among the oldest written texts in human history are the Vedas. They describe four stages of life—covering a life span of 100 years. Yet through the Middle Ages, and even up to the Industrial Revolution, average life expectancy was a mere 40 years! We were able to improve our life expectancy at birth with the advent of antibiotics and improvements in sanitation. However, we have progressed at a painfully slow pace when it comes to improving longevity past improvements in infant mortality and communicable diseases.
At the same time, though, we have also discovered and developed insulin, blood transfusion, penicillin, radiation therapy, immune suppressants, birth control pills, vaccines, organ transplantation, MRI scans, AIDS treatment, IVF, artificial heart valves, stents, joint replacement, and a cure for leukemia in children. With the introduction of DNA repair technologies, protein synthesis, and a new understanding of the gut microbiome, we are actually on the cusp of making disease, disability, and death optional!
Our future is blindingly bright, not only because of these advances, but because civilization is ripe for a renaissance of the conditions and values that are essential to our survival as a species. We are getting ready to restore the average life expectancy of 100 years, with many of today’s children looking forward to life spans far greater than that average. Death will become elective—indeed, a “voluntary act” involving a celebratory ceremony to mark the completion of a meaningful and joyous life.
Considering that humans are an ingenious, resilient, and hardy species, we will undoubtedly restore our food production system back to where it was prior to the Industrial Age. Soil quality will be restored as well, as we return to eating a nutrient-dense calorie-sparse diet interspersed with periods of fasting. Organic farming will be the norm, as it has been for most of our existence. This way we will restore our connection with nature and the soil of our dear planet, Mother Earth. Feeding will once again be a cherished ritual rather than the mechanical, mindless, and mundane act it has become. We will restore our relationship with food to both nurture and nourish ourselves. In doing so, we will activate the inborn systems of rebalancing and rejuvenation that each of us naturally comes equipped with.
Secondly, in reconnecting with Gaia—the personification of the Earth—we will naturally become more active as we spend more time outdoors working with our hands and feet, paying homage to the soil which sustains us. The rampant industrialization and mechanization of our lives has wreaked havoc on our relationship with our mother planet.
Thirdly, we will resync with our circadian rhythms, in which every cell of our body and every microbe living within us has evolved in an eco-friendly manner. In parallel, we will re-establish our cherished relationships with fellow members of our species and with other species, with which we have co-evolved and co-exist.
Moreover, as consumers of health care, we will play a much more active role in its transformation. This transformation will not only require healthcare providers to redefine their services beyond the traditional boundaries, but will also require consumers to be more actively engaged as a community to truly bend the healthcare cost curves and improve overall health and well-being. To these ends, we are already shaping the future of health with the help of:
Wearable technologies providing actionable data.
Precision medicine based on biochemical individuality.
Genomics and the ability to modify genetic predispositions.
Study of the gut microbiome and, based on the results, the ability to define health and prescribe optimal personalized diet and lifestyle recommendations.
What’s more, the boundaries we see in healthcare that force its practice in terms of specialties based on organs and systems will fade. Medical specialists calling themselves “ologists” will disappear as we realize that health and disease does not lend itself to such artificial classifications and that the body works as a unit in combination with the planet and the larger universe—converging on “omics”—genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, microbiomics.
Machines and algorithms will enable doctors to reclaim their place as true healers by enabling them to spend time and energy empathically connecting with the people who need their help. Individuals will assume the driver’s seat regarding their own health. Communities will play a significant role in driving deeper engagement and adoption of new tools and technologies to improve overall health and wellness.
We will live healthier and more active lives by leveraging data-driven insights, tools, and social support to make health happen. That means we will create and deliver solutions that:
facilitate positive (even healthful?) lifestyle change by design,
are designed to place people and how they live their lives at the core of their experience, and
are effective in helping people improve their health.
As technology makes everything exponentially faster, smarter, smaller, cheaper, and better, we will also have the data we need to make better choices every day. While data on its own has no value, it contributes to an actionable insight. Actionable insights are of limited value unless supported by solutions to act upon them successfully.
Health is a state where one experiences a full “human” life across all faculties. It is a function of both the physical and the mental activities we perform daily. A family leading a healthy life enjoys a tremendous economic value as a result, but as with any long-term asset, the significant payoff is over the long term. Hence, any health-related business model must factor in this investment.
Today’s generation is perhaps the most health-conscious in the last 100+ years. We see two reasons for this. First, a hundred years ago, lifestyle was not a key determinant of health or lifespan, which was dominated by more serious threats such as infectious diseases or war. Indeed, life was brutish and short. Second, previous generations did not have the information to assess the impact of lifestyle, nor the tools to address it. Today, of course, we’ve moved far beyond these limitations, and the focus of our attention has shifted accordingly. Today the priorities that will shape the future of health and wellness are far more proactive—and data-driven. As healthcare providers of the future, our priorities now are to:
INSPIRE: Encourage people to lead healthier lives with their families and friends—putting them back in charge as active participants rather than passive recipients.
INFORM: Help people become more aware of their bodies, learn about ways they can improve their health, and tackle health concerns.
INTEGRATE: Empower them to share their stories, successes, and challenges with their families, friends, and the world at large and help contribute to the worldwide movement to lead healthy lives.
This approach will produce radically different outcomes—healthspan outcomes. And consequently, we are emboldened to make some equally radical predictions.
Now, it’s true that Alvin Toffler, writing in Future Shock, affirmed Neils Bohr’s warnings about predicting the future. “No serious futurist,” Toffler wrote, “deals in ‘predictions.’… No one even faintly familiar with the complexities of forecasting lays claim to absolute knowledge of tomorrow…. Every statement about the future ought, by rights, be accompanied by a string of qualifiers—ifs, ands, buts, and on the other hands.”
Indeed. But then Toffler turns right around and adds, “The inability to speak with precision and certainty about the future, however, is no excuse for silence.” So we will not be silent!
Here, then, are our “predictions” about where the state of healthcare is headed in the next 50 years:
There will be vaccines to prevent Alzheimer’s, malaria, TB, HIV, Hepatitis C, Ebola, enterovirus D68, and many cancers.
Regenerative stem cells will replace organ transplantation.
Bariatric surgery will become a historical footnote.
Imaging technology and biomarkers will enable early identification and aid in eradication of tumors.
Immunotherapy will be the key to cancer treatments and cut cancer mortality by over 50 percent.
Democratization of knowledge will occur. Supercomputers will allow citizens to access health information. Noninvasive sensors in our clothes will monitor a ton of information.
Personalized medicine will be common practice.
Nanotechnology and nanobiomedicine will flourish and permit more precise diagnoses and targeted therapies.
There will be greater scientific understanding of the role of gut microbiota, leading to novel therapies.
Stem cells and spinal implants will allow tens of thousands of paralyzed individuals to walk.
Exploration of the workings of the brain and consciousness will be undertaken and provide masterful insights.
Social and political changes will have a major impact in addressing health on many frontiers.
Healthcare will be available and affordable for all earthlings, especially with advances in tele-medicine.
Primary care medicine will be celebrated as the “Heroes’ Profession.”
Patients will take a pill that will “mimic exercise” to combat the metabolic syndrome.
There will be vaccines and/or treatment for all chronic diseases.
Understanding and harnessing the microbiome will be a beacon of advancing science.
Average life expectancy in the United States will exceed 110 years.
With better health will come better life. And that’s the point, isn’t it? Such radical changes in the nature of health, then, will yield equally radical changes in the nature of life itself. One bold and audacious set of predictions, then, deserves another:
Compassion will be the universal religion.
Gratitude will be the universal language.
Children will be hailed as the most insightful philosophers.
Universities will exist primarily in the cloud, and education will be accessible and affordable by all.
Cheap desalination will make water abundant for all.
Humans will conquer the mystery of consciousness and unfold our full potential.
Humans will travel to distant planets in the time it now takes us to travel by car from Boston to San Francisco and back.
The majority of humans will be vegetarians or pescatarians.
All children will practice meditation in school.
Empathy classes will be mandatory every week in school from kindergarten to high school.
Global cooling will occur and save our planet.
There will be peace on Earth.
Sanjiv Chopra, MD, is professor of medicine and served as Faculty Dean for Continuing Medical Education at Harvard Medical School for 12 years. He serves as a Marshall Wolf Master Clinician Educator at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Chopra has more than 150 publications and nine books to his credit. He is editor-in-chief of the Hepatology section of UpToDate, the most widely used electronic textbook in the world, subscribed to by more than 1.2 million physicians in 195 countries. He is a sought-after inspirational speaker across the United States and abroad, addressing diverse audiences on topics related to medicine, leadership, happiness, and living with purpose. His books include Dr. Chopra Says: Medical Facts and Myths Everyone Should Know (With Allan Lotvin, MD); Live Better, Live Longer—the New Studies That Reveal What’s Really Good and Bad for Your Health; Leadership by Example: The Ten Key Principles of all Great Leaders; The Big 5 Five Simple Things You Can Do to Live a Longer, Healthier Life; The Two Most Important Days (with Gina Vild). With his brother Deepak, he wrote a double memoir: Brotherhood: Dharma, Destiny and the American Dream.
Pankaj Vij, MD FACP, is board certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine and practices in Pleasanton, California. His areas of interest include lifestyle, nutrition, fitness, mind-body medicine, stress management, and mindfulness. He is a graduate of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India. He completed a residency in internal medicine at William Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak, MI. He is the author of Turbo Metabolism: 8 Weeks to a New You: Preventing and Reversing Diabetes, Obesity, Heart Disease, and Other Metabolic Diseases by Treating the Causes. His hobbies include spending time outdoors and playing guitar.