Future of medicine

Background and objectives

The medicine of the future should be safe and effective; it should revolve around patient welfare; everybody everywhere should ideally have access to medicine of the same level of quality, and it should be personalised to allow for individual treatment in order to maximise efficacy. In addition, it should be science- and evidence-based, translate well into practice and meet international standards. The German healthcare system only ticks some of these boxes. Despite the comparatively high budget, the system is not reaching its full potential: there is insufficient digitalisation, scientific progress is slow to be translated into clinical routine, and there is a large urban-rural divide in quality and quantity of care, to name but a few.

The healthcare system needs to undergo a paradigm shift – towards a system that takes advantage of the possibilities of modern medicine to maintain the health of large swathes of the population. This means greater efficiency, being process-led, and also a shift from experience-based to science-based medicine.

To answer the question as to what technological developments will play a decisive role in shaping the medicine of the future and help solve the above challenges, acatech organised three topic conferences between June and September 2021. The speeches and discussions centred on digitalisation, molecularisation and automation.

In view of the latest developments and European legislative initiatives, the acatech topic network Healthcare Technologies decided in spring 2023 to draft an IMPULSE paper on the use of health data.

Further information

acatech IMPULSE “Safe and sovereign use of health data”