A combination of nano technology, biotechnology and information technology can enabled humans to have a 24/7 health monitoring system in and around their bodies.
Tiny molecular nanobots that can be simply swallowed as a pill will be developed.
They enter our body, the blood stream and carry out monitoring and maintenance tasks. So, there will be two categories of these nanobots. – general nanobots for monitoring purposes and expert nanobots for maintenance and repair purposes.
The general nanobots will stay forever in the human body or till they are disposed off after their batteries are drained. Their functionality will be to carry out general monitoring tasks like checking the blood sugar levels, blood pressure levels, hormone levels, detecting any bacterial or viral attacks, reporting fat accumulation, detecting arterial blockages, detecting tumorous or cancerous cells, reporting vital statistics for all organs, and so on.
These general nanobots will be traveling via the blood stream to all parts of body 24/7 tirelessly ensuring that all is well and the body is performing smoothly.
As and when there are any threats to the body, internal or external, these nanobots will alert the external devices which will guide the person towards immediate measures to be taken to address the issue and at the same time the device will inform your family physician about the updated new status via the internet!
By the way this external device could be a part of your shirt’s button or a tattoo on your body!
So these general nanobots will also act like early warning systems on the onset of diabetes, when the first few cancerous cells are born, when there is a nutrient deficiency, and so on.
When there is an external virus or bacteria attack, the nanobot in your body will take its genetic finger print and relay the same to external devices which in turn will match the finger print against a database that can quickly identify the strain of the virus or bacteria that has entered your body. You can do a follow up on this alert, contact the physician and take medication as directed.
Note that all this happens at the very onset of the attack or illness giving ample time to have any external medication or treatment required. In other words, every illness will be detected right at the beginning of its first stage!
In case of an accident in a street, the external device using its GPS tracking service pinpoints your current location exactly and rushes an SOS call to the nearest ambulance service with accurate details of your current location!! No issues even if there is nobody around you at the time of accident, the ambulance will arrive asap. The same holds good in case of a heart attack too!!
Then we have expert nanobots that can be received on prescription. Their tasks are more specific like and they complement the body’s defense mechanisms. For instance, an expert nanobot might be designed to target and destroy cancerous cells. Another set of expert nanobots may be designed to dissolve kidney stones. Another type of expert nanobots may simply throw out unwanted excess fat as and when they accumulate beyond a minimum level.
In other words, these expert nanobots are specific task oriented and leave your body as soon as their task is complete.
To summarize, a set of nanobot warriors will be defending our body 24/7 in the future. And all these are just the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come. The possibilities are immense.
For instance, with more advances in nano technology we can have nanobots entering each individual cell and monitoring and repairing them complementing their natural counterparts. We can have nanobot defense mechanism at a cellular level, with each cell in the body having its own set of nanobot warriors, monitoring the cell’s health and activities.