Dr. Bertalan Mesko, PhD, known as The Medical Futurist, is the Director of The Medical Futurist Institute. He specializes in analyzing the impact of science fiction technologies on global medicine and healthcare.

As a geek physician with a PhD in genomics, he is also an Amazon Top 100 author and serves as a Private Professor at Semmelweis Medical School in Budapest, Hungary.

Dr. Mesko has delivered over 900 keynotes at prestigious institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, and Yale Universities, as well as organizations like the WHO and the world's top 10 pharmaceutical companies. His insights on healthcare technology have made him a leading global voice in the field.

Featured by major media outlets including CNN, National Geographic, Forbes, TIME magazine, BBC, and the New York Times, Dr. Mesko regularly shares his analyses on medicalfuturist.com.

His research focuses on the role of artificial intelligence and digital health technologies in shaping the future of care. He is a member of the "Committee on Future Research" of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Dedicated to pioneering medical futures studies as a scientific discipline, Dr. Mesko aims to make futures methods widely accessible in healthcare.

He is a Certified Superforecaster for Good Judgment, Inc.

Bertalan Meskó

This is the amount of paperwork required to admit a patient to a hospital in the United Kingdom!

It’s basically a “paper patient twin.”

For an experienced staff, it would take roughly ~90 minutes of documentation on paper.

Or as part of traditional EHR workflows, around ~35–45 minutes and 600–800 clicks!

Or about 15 minutes and 20-40 clicks using an AI scribe.

Just my subjective estimations.

That means AI could reduce documentation time by roughly 70% compared to paper, and reduce click burden by around 95% compared to conventional EHR systems. Significantly lowering cognitive load and fragmentation would be the added bonus.

What are hospitals waiting for?

Bertalan Meskó, MD, PhD

The Medical Futurist, Author of Your Map to the Future, Global Keynote Speaker, and Futurist Researcher

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What is "digital blood testing"?

The idea is that using wearable patches makes it possible to measure medication levels in blood without taking blood samples.

"In a pilot trial – the findings of which have been published in Nature Biotechnology – the patch was used to monitor levels of vancomycin, a last-resort antibiotic that was said to have always been tricky to dose.
 
The patch, which is reportedly more comfortable than standard blood draws, uses synthetic DNA-based sensors, called aptamers, to measure dosage levels."

It would be a game-changer in so many areas from chronic disease management and at-home care to drug monitoring and precision health!

More on this: https://lnkd.in/djYHdBtM

This is a handheld X-ray from KnovelCam. 

Lightweight, portable, and works right at the bedside!

But it triggered a bigger question: What happens when powerful medical technologies become too accessible?

When technology becomes:
• smaller
• cheaper
• easier to use
• directly accessible to patients

Then it changes human behavior.

With handheld imaging devices, the risk is overuse, unnecessary scans, and people underestimating radiation exposure because the device "looks harmless".

We’ve already seen similar behavioral shifts with:
• Continuous glucose monitors used without medical indication
• Direct-to-consumer genetic tests interpreted without context
• Full-body MRI scans marketed as preventive screening
• Health wearables creating anxiety from perfectly normal data

So what other digital health and medical technology comes to mind that you think patients will definitely abuse?

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