Surgical Technology and Advanced Medicine

This is the medicine of today 

Envision
A motorcycles screams around a corner and swerves to avoid an oncoming semi truck.   The rider lays it down and skids across the pavement and collides with a guard rail shattering his leg.   After months in a cast the bone slowly forms around surgically implanted metal pins and the leg painstakingly heals.   For weeks the rider is unable to walk and only through a slow and painful process of rehabilitation is he able to get to his feet and navigate normally.   

Future Medicine

Researchers at the Defense Science Offices are working on technologies to change the curative rates of incapacitating wounds on soldiers and civilians alike.    They envision technologies where a person, such as the motorcycle rider would be back on his feet within days.   Research teams are formed to tackle specific problems and take surgical technology to new levels of advanced medicine.

Darpa Artificial Limb Movie

Fracture Putty

One of the most common wounds is a bone fracture.   When a bone is fractured it takes time to heal, and is often permanently changed in the process.  In most cases the bone itself heals in a slightly deformed manner, even with the efforts of top notch surgeons, tendon rerouting and careful placement of metal or carbon fiber pins, or even rods and plates.   If the damage is extensive, amputation is often the only option for the patient.   

Research funding is being invested in developing a new tool for this kind of injury.  Fracture putty is intended to create an osteo-conductive material similar to human bone which blood vessels can grow through.   The patch is expected to be a form of highly specialized putty which can harden in a short period of time and give the leg its former load carrying strength in days instead of weeks or months.    The research is concentrating on developing a compound which will eventually be replaced through natural replacement by the bodies own process for repairing bone.   As the body grows new bone and muscle around the putty material, the putty itself slowly degrades in a form that the body can process as waste.   Over time the putty is gone, and perfectly shaped bone will take its place.

While the specific properties of this putty are unknown, there is very real funding attached to this program.   The procedure is potentially very rapid and the cost benefits as well as the real life benefits to people who have been injured is fantastic.  
    

Artificial Limbs

In the event that the bone is unsalvageable, there is considerable progress being made in advanced prosthesis.   Timelines for completion of artificial limbs with comparable dexterity, form and function to a natural limb is less than four years according to those working on these projects.

Bio Mathematics

Also on the DSO’s hit list are the mathematical foundations of biology is developing a new scientific field and language.   Biomath or Bio Mathematics is the study of how biological systems work as a collective and predictable entity.   Anything from a culture of a few cells to the behavior of complex neuro-biological systems is fair game for researchers in bio mathematics.  
Even the actions of a single micro-organism such as a virus are expected to be subject to the laws of math and physics.   By creating a scalar and physically accurate mathematical model of how biological systems work and interact, the Department of Science expects to deepen our understanding of the biological world and bring surprising new breakthroughs into such baffling problems as the cure for disease.   Understanding the mutagenic qualities of bio systems and eco systems is expected to grow easier as new mathematical models are created, tested and applied to computer simulations and real world models.

Advanced Medicine

Nanotechnology is being applied to bio-medical applications.

Other areas where advanced medicine is making rapid strides are in the regeneration of skin tissue and even organ tissues.    Recent breakthroughs in cloning techniques and stem cell programming include the ability to create skin grafts, organ grafts and in some cases complete body parts from dna samples of the patient.    In addition to limiting the rate of rejection in the patient, reducing the market for black market organs and changing the entire way we look at injuries, this technology has serious implications in the extension of human lifespans.