The World in 2030

292 The World in 2030
inhabiting the body of a 30 year-old. Will the mind be as
young, as energetic and as lustful for life as the body? Or is
there an upper psychological limit to human experience, a
point of world weariness at which the psyche itself becomes
exhausted? We don’t know, but by 2030 we will be well on
our way to finding out.
Technology, Patient Power and the Medical Profession
Until very recently, ‘healthcare’ meant ‘sickness care’.
When patients became ill doctors tried to find a cure or
a treatment for their malady. But this began to change
in the mid-1990s when the healthcare profession began
to recognise that preventive treatments for diseases and
conditions that threatened to emerge were more efficient
(and more economical) than treating those conditions after
they had manifested themselves. Perhaps the best example
of such preventive medical practice is the widespread use of
‘Lipitor’, 514 the world’s most widely prescribed cholesterollowering
drug. Raised cholesterol is an important indicator
of potential cardio-vascular problems and Lipitor and similar
drugs reduce the build up of cholesterol and thus reduce the
likelihood of cardio-vascular disease developing.
Over the next twenty-five years technology itself and
technology-driven developments in medical science will
push medicine more and more towards the preventive
model. The role of the patient and the role of the healthcare
professional will also change, as technology causes more
power to be transferred to the patient.