Ted Audio Collective

This is Ted Health, I'm Dr. Shoshana Unger-Lighter.

We've been using devices like defibrillators and pacemakers in our bodies for decades

to replace or support damage tissue.

In his 2021 Ted Fellows Talk, Amino Engineer Aaron Morris imagines a not-so-distant future

where this technology is used to create a diagnostic lab within the body.

This is a truly inside-out approach that could be game-changing for doctors

to be able to diagnose illness earlier and provide better treatments.

Ow!

As anyone who's stubbed a toe in the dark or spent an hour searching for their keys' nose,

we're often limited by what we can or cannot see.

In fact, even our own bodies can be black boxes.

Today, I want to take you through a vision of healthcare that scientists and engineers

myself included are building.

We are creating a diagnostic lab inside your body that can provide a continuous analysis

of your health so that we can better see what's happening in patients.

Currently, if someone is sick, we may diagnose them by using a biopsy to bring

disease tissue outside the body, where we can see it.

We do this if we suspect, for instance, that a growth might be cancerous.

Unfortunately, this approach can't work all the time because of two major problems.

First, some tissues, like brains or spinal cords, can't be routinely biopsyed.

And second, doctors often don't know which tissue is causing the problem,

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