Bridging the Gap between the Technological Singularity and Mainstream Medicine: Highlighting a Course on Technology and the Future of Medicine


  •  Kim Solez    
  •  Ashlyn Bernier    
  •  Joel Crichton    
  •  Heather Graves    
  •  Preeti Kuttikat    
  •  Ross Lockwood    
  •  William Marovitz    
  •  Damon Monroe    
  •  Mark Pallen    
  •  Shawna Pandya    
  •  David Pearce    
  •  Abdullah Saleh    
  •  Neelam Sandhu    
  •  Consolato Sergi    
  •  Jack Tuszynski    
  •  Earle Waugh    
  •  Jonathan White    
  •  Julielynn Wong    
  •  Michael Woodside    
  •  Roger Wyndham    
  •  Osmar Zaiane    
  •  David Zakus    

Abstract

The “technological singularity” is defined as that putative point in time forecasted to occur in the mid twenty-first century when machines will become smarter than humans, leading humans and machines to merge. It is hypothesized that this event will have a profound influence on medicine and population health. This work describes a new course on Technology and the Future of Medicine developed by a diverse, multi-disciplinary group of faculty members at a Canadian university. The course began as a continuous professional learning course and was later established as a recognized graduate course. We describe the philosophy of the course, the barriers encountered in course development, and some of the idiosyncratic solutions that were developed to overcome these, including the use of YouTube audience retention analytics. We hope that this report might provide a useful template for other institutions attempting to set up similar programs.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.