Games not only motivate for new achievements, but also help to reduce the level of stress before examinations. In addition to the fear of the procedure, many doctors are faced with a general lack of knowledge in children and their families about diagnostic methods. Therefore, experts began to apply gamification technology to make the examination process more comfortable for young patients.
The popularity of a healthy lifestyle, as well as special attention to the prevention of diseases lead to the fact that gamification becomes one of the most effective methods of patients’ rehabilitation and habit developing.
The primary influx of application development with gamification was centered on:
Lifestyle and wellness wearables with partner applications: Wearable gadgets, for example, the Nike+Fuelband, Jawbone UP24 and Fitbit Force enable clients to keep informed about their development and interface with different clients to think about details.

Nutrition, obesity and weight management. Applications as HealthMonthTM which assist clients oversee their weight management, makes a good market. These applications are intended to follow well being measurements and give challenges and prizes.

The following wave of application development with gamification will concentrate on:
Disease determent, self-control and dependability. Chronic diseases as diabetes or cancer require regular testing and follow, however for some people it is not easy to stick to plans. Applications like Bayer’s DidgetTM makes it easy to users. A video game called Re-Mission enlightens cancer patients about their disease by giving them a nanobot named Roxxi as she goes through the body of the fictional cancer patient.
Psychological, mental, emotional health. A healthy mind is vital for a healthy body. Applications like BellyBioTM help soothe uneasiness through deep breathing exercises and music. Sparx, 3D dream game, created by the University of Auckland, New Zealand, helps people with depression to manage their depression by psychological behavior treatment procedures.

Many countries are already successfully introducing a game approach to medicine.
For example, in China, the focus is gradually shifting from the treatment of diseases to their prevention and early diagnosis. Moreover, the lack of qualified specialists in some regions, overcrowding and poor access to medical care have led the authorities to think about using gamification to solve key health problems.
With the help of special platforms and gadgets, residents of China will be able to independently monitor their health and not forget about regular visits to the doctor. In
Japan, gaming medical applications are used to increase public interest in sports, to prevent chronic diseases, and also to address the problem of increased stress among Japanese.
Mobile applications and medical gadgets provide a new look in healthcare and enable people to make a choice in favor of the right lifestyle. There are all chances for us to wait for more promising developments with the use of gamification technologies, which can take care of people’s health in a fundamentally new level.

Why travel for robotic surgery?

Unlike outbound medical tourism, inbound patients are typically not cost-driven. The quality of doctors and state-of-the-art technology in the United States attracts patients who are looking for the best possible medical care, regardless of expense. Many times, insurances are covering a portion of their international medical care. When evaluating prostate cancer treatment options, there’s no need for men to be confined by the borders of their country. For many, a cancer-free life far outweighs the possible inconvenience of seeking treatment in the U.S. Doctors such as myself, are providing international prostate cancer patients with access to the same opportunities for recovery and quality of life as those patients in the U.S. Patients can be guided through all aspects of their United States prostate cancer surgery, from travel arrangements to family care to recovery, helping to reduce the complexity of such endeavors. Patients can often find an instant support system for both themselves and their families as they face life-saving surgery in the U.S.

What are the advantages of choosing skill and experience over convenience?

It is important for other U.S. medical specialists to recognize their roles in world healthcare. Patients are coming here because they are looking for the best possible medical care. The doctors and surgeons in their countries may have access to new technology, but may not yet have the case experience of U.S. doctors. That is something I, and we, can offer them. While many now have the equipment to perform robotic prostatectomy surgery, they simply have not had the patient volume, and therefore level of experience. American outcome statistics are not necessarily statistics that patients in other countries, with less experienced surgeons, may find. Prostate cancer patients deserve treatment options that are timely and medically advanced.

Looking Towards the Future
In this era of global healthcare, patients often travel to the United States to receive the expert medical care with the most advanced technology. Robot-assisted laparoscopic prostatectomy (RALP) is still a young science and uncommon surgical procedures in other countries. When you compare surgical outcomes between domestic and international patients and examine challenges that international patients face in getting RALP, their medical trip are justified.

For example, you need to go to a barber, and you couldn’t get an appointment because of busy schedule at work. In this case, it will be enough to ask your google assistant. Google duplex calls a barber and makes an appointment for you by talking on the phone like a normal human.

It is a real telephone conversation between artificial intelligence and person. What surprises me most is that when talking to a person the assistant understands all questions asked and answers naturally. At this moment there is no another such software which is able to imitate people so fluently and well. You remember Sofia as well, even if you talk to her on the phone, without looking at her cute, incredibly natural face, you’ll definetely know that she is a robot.

Google Duplex clearly understands the conversation and maintains communication and fulfills the task, even if the opposite side speaks with an accent or uses incorrect sentences.

If I were on the other side of such a real conversation, probably, I couldn’t notice that it was artificial intelligence at all. I think, now when it has become impossible to distinguish artificial intelligence from real people, Google Duplex can pass the *Turing Test.

(*Turing test, performed by Alan Turing in 1950, tests a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from that of a human)

To tell the truth, I was very impressed when I first knew this feature; technology that allows us to see clearly the improvement of the artificial intelligence. It’s both scary and favourable. Now most people even think that by not introducing itself as an assistant it deceives people which is not ethical. Obviously, it does not bother me to know whether or not the other side is artificial intelligence, but I am worried more about what can happen next.

For example, it can cause people working at call centers of large companies to lose their jobs. Imagine that a company that adapts this system to its sales department is calling you. (wait a bit) Google system… No one knows you better than google with the data it has about you! (Shortly called Facebook). Since Google knows all your habits, what you like and what you do not like, I do not think there is a person who will sell you a product better than such a clever artificial intelligence which has so much information about you. And will these phone calls be recorded? If so, we should be warned of this.

On the other hand, it can open up much more creative techniques for the already common phone scams.

Beside artificial intelligence improvement, robot technology is also developing rapidly. Robots are widely used in factories or warehouses. For example, the huge warehouse built by an English company works with the system including hundreds of robots which receive incoming orders and take them to the delivery unit contacting with each other with air traffic control technology and 4g.

In addition to these, now, powerful humanoid robots and even robots resembling 4-legged animals are being developed.

The robots developed by Boston Dynamic company are now able to run and even somersault, while in the beginning they were just trying to walk, and they can do more things day by day.

This company has also developed a robot named spot mini that looks like a dog. This robot with several sensors on it and cameras located in the front, back, right and left sides is able to see obstacles and act accordingly.

In other words, when it is moved by manual control, it maps out the route and then moves on its own according to that map.

This little friend can also wear a mechanical arm attachment which helps it to do certain simple tasks like opening doors. However, it will be possible to add more different functions in the future.

You have no chance of reaching any of these robots for the moment, but according to the company’s CEO, these robots are supposed to be released in 2019. They are planning to produce 100 items by the end of 2019. Although the price will probably be equivalent to an ultra-luxury car, now availability of this kind of technology for people becomes possible.

You can watch my YouTube channel for detailed information on the topic.

Alp Gursoy

www.youtube.com/alpgursoy

Our dream in medicine is to replace a limb that has been damaged or lost function with a new piece that can substitute it, like a spare part of a car. While we try to reach this dream with 3D bioprinters, additionally we of course use also 3D printers in medical education, surgical guides and assistants, prostheses, hearing aids, dentures and many other beneficial things.

The basic philosophy of 3D printing is based on the fact that a whole is formed in layers. The 3D printer says, “if I can print all layers and combine them neatly, I’ll get the same of the whole”. If we hear that voice and combine it with our imagination and medical knowledge, it will not be hard to think about the diversity and limitlessness of what we can do with the 3D printer in medicine.

Think about a nose cancer patient, lost nearly half of his face. This is aesthetic, medical and social problem. You can make 3D printed special prostheses for this patient. The result will be like magic. Surgical applications of 3D printing are evolving rapidly from the production of models for surgical planning to biological active implants for craniofacial reconstruction. 3D printing is also being widely used in the manufacture of hearing aids and in dentistry as molds for implantable material or prostheses.

And make empathy with a surgeon has any specialization. Every patient of them has not same anatomy, different disease and sure need different type and method of surgery. Especially in complex cases if surgeon can see 3D printed surgical guide that prepared from the DICOM data of the patient, success rate and self confidence of surgeon will increase, time of operation and stress of surgeon will decrease. It is possible to get 3D print from CT, MRI and ultrasound data specifically. This print outs can be used not only pre-operatively, intraoperative surgical instruments can be created. By this way we can shorten operation time, get less risk, reduce blood loss, tissue damage, need for anesthesia, hospitalization period.

We can use 3D printed materials for trainee education, simulation labs and for patient education, informed consent. Casts are finally getting a modern spin with 3-D-printing; casts boast an open-lattice plastic design that’s customized to the individual patient. A pregnant may see the ultrasound image of her baby, can hear the sound of the heart and now can get 3D printed shape of little baby, so cute.

The use of 3D printers in medicine depends on what we need, what we want to do and our medical knowledge. And like all other use areas the thing we can do is limitless with our imagination. That is “3D Medicine”

Nihat Buğra Ağaoğlu MD, PhD

Consultant at Ministery of Health in Turkey