Tomorrow’s Needs: Health

This is the fifth in a series of opinion pieces from leaders around campus on the
role that Michigan Tech innovators will play to define the world’s emerging needs. 

A fundamental criteria defining the success or failure of a society is its ability
to provide the conditions that enable people to live long, healthy lives. Since the
time of Michigan Tech’s founding, advances in lifestyle, public health and biomedical
sciences have dramatically improved people’s lives. However, there is still progress
to be made here in the United States and globally as new, multifaceted challenges
continue to emerge.

Using the successful framework that produced the rapid advances in lifespan and health
in the 20th century, tomorrow’s leaders will continue to seek solutions to challenges
in health care and the environment.

Technological solutions to these pressing problems will be the cornerstone of future
innovation.

President Rick Koubek’s September essay in Michigan Tech News outlined how the ability
of Michigan Tech to find solutions to society’s challenges stems from our agility
and willingness to evolve as those challenges change. He then urged us to consider
two questions that will help define how Michigan Tech will succeed in the future.
“In 2035, what will society’s most pressing questions be?” he asked. “And what are
Michigan Tech’s best opportunities for answering those questions?”

Below are three big questions the world will be asking a decade from now about how
to build and sustain a healthy society — questions Michigan Tech will be well suited
to help answer.

How do we provide an environment where people can be healthy?

Advances in public health, including access to clean water and reduced exposure to
air pollution, have greatly improved human health and longevity. Despite these advances,
however, we have not completely eliminated the impacts of our environment on human
health. From the lead in Flint’s drinking water supply to emerging concerns about
widespread exposure to microplastics and PFAS “forever chemicals,” recent examples
highlight the breadth of these possible threats. The tasks ahead of us will be to
eliminate environmental threats and to more quickly identify when new ones emerge.

The challenge of providing a healthy environment will be compounded by the effects
of a changing climate. Excessive heat is already a major health risk, one that will
expand geographically and occur more frequently. Indirect effects of climate change,
such as the spread of insect-borne diseases like dengue and malaria, will pose threats
to populations who have little experience coping with them. Rising to meet such challenges
will necessitate that climate scientists and health scientists work together to reduce
the impact of climate change on health.

How do we prepare for expected and unexpected health challenges?

Our failure to prepare for emerging challenges results in unnecessary harm to human
health. While society’s recent experience with COVID-19 is a dramatic example, we
continue to struggle to treat people who suffer from age-old issues like heart attacks,
strokes and cancer — some of the leading causes of death perennially in the U.S. Of
growing concern is the crisis in access to health care in rural communities, where
rapidly aging populations and a loss of both health care providers and infrastructure
are combining to form a perfect storm of health and wellness dilemmas.

Primary care providers are the cornerstone of health care, yet we do not have enough
of them — and not only in rural areas. Can we rethink whom we receive care from, and
how? Can we reimagine access to health care altogether? Doing so will mean finding
both creative ways to develop the future health care workforce and innovative solutions
to support it, such as the development of personalized sensors that can do more monitoring
and care in the home so fewer caregivers are needed.

Another important question of particular relevance here at Michigan Tech: Can we use
advanced technology and the large amount of health care data that we possess to improve
diagnosis and future treatment?

We must help envision the possibilities of predictive medicine, wherein data gathered
when a person seeks treatment for one disease may show they are likely to need treatment
for an unrelated condition after several years. The use of artificial intelligence
and machine learning in conjunction with asking the right questions could greatly
improve prophylactic care.

What new therapies can be found to treat known and unknown diseases?

While the use of AI is greatly advancing the design of both synthetic and biologic
drugs — and also inventing new drug classes altogether — many drugs still have side
effects that are not envisioned until the drug is making its way through human trials.

Similarly, advancements in genetic sequencing — which can tell us a lot about a person’s
health and disease state — have made the sequencing more accurate, effective and affordable.
Genetic treatments have been used successfully for COVID vaccines, and they show promise
to potentially cure diseases like hemophilia. We are also starting to see gene editing
making its way to in vivo systems.

Such progress raises a number of important questions that researchers at Michigan
Tech are prepared to help answer: Can better models help us know a drug’s full side-effect
profile and mitigate it before we enter human trials? Can we better understand the
biology of diseases to bring about better therapies? Can we edit out mutations that
cause disease? What ethical considerations need to be explored in genetic medicine?
Finally, what role do medical devices have in the treatment of disease? Can we create
synthetic organs or devices to augment or replace diseased tissues?

*****

Society in 2035 will surely be asking a wide range of questions about human health
beyond those we have highlighted here. As other authors in this series have noted,
answering these questions and solving the problems they pose will require collaborative
approaches and multidisciplinary perspectives. A few examples to emphasize the point: 

• Artificial intelligence and other computing tools are already becoming integral to
  biomedical research.
• Many emerging infectious diseases have their origins in wildlife species, so determining
  areas of risk and monitoring for potential new human pathogens will not only meld
  ecology and epidemiology, but also depend on the social sciences to help understand
  the circumstances where people and wildlife come into contact.
• Science, engineering and computing are all needed to develop cost-effective treatments,
  and social sciences and the humanities are needed to successfully communicate to a
  public wary of new technology.
• Nursing and pre-health graduates will be needed to address concerns about access to
  health care, especially in rural areas.
• All of this will occur in the context of a rapidly warming climate that will exacerbate
  existing concerns and present new and unexpected challenges that only diverse teams
  of researchers will be able to address.

Addressing such challenges will require continued convergence among disciplines at
Michigan Tech. Fortunately, the University has invested in building a culture of multidisciplinary
research through its 16 research centers and institutes, which serve as incubators for interdisciplinary research collaborations that bridge
academic colleges and departments.

The networking and connectivity of Michigan Tech’s research centers and institutes
create a research enterprise able to anticipate future obstacles and opportunities,
and to pivot quickly in a changing landscape.

This is the agility President Koubek celebrated in his opening call to action. That
agility, and the culture of collaboration that gives rise to it, are precisely what
will distinguish Michigan Tech innovators as current and future leaders in providing
solutions to improve human health and well-being.

Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigan’s flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure.