Archi.ru has already written about the exhibition of the final works of students "Strelka" 2014/15 "The Big Future" (exhibition website - bigfuture.ru). We are now publishing one of these 11 research projects carried out by students Egor Orlov, Varvara Nazarova and Thomas Clark under the guidance of teacher Daria Paramonova.
Around the world, healthcare systems are finding it increasingly difficult to cope with the growing number of chronic diseases, and biotechnology (or, as we call it, “technically advanced biology”) can make a difference for the better. More effective and cheaper biotech drugs with narrow, targeted action will account for about half of the pharmaceutical market by 2020, and special wearable devices will help with early diagnosis. On the one hand, this will make medicine primarily a data science, and on the other, it will fundamentally change the attitude of society towards people with disabilities or disabilities. In the distant future, one can imagine the transition from the silence and stigmatization of disability to the triumph of a biotechnologically improved person.
Healthcare in Russia, the world's leading country in the number of deaths from cardiovascular diseases, is hardly ready for radical biotechnological innovations. In regions where, unlike the capital, often there is no even the simplest equipment, innovations will not reach soon. The national habit of waiting "for itself" complicates both early diagnosis and treatment. In addition, health care costs budgeted for up to 2017 were recently cut by 23%, and there is simply no funding for the biotech revolution in the country.
What awaits Russia? The share of personal spending on health is growing in comparison with the state (from 24% in 1995 to 40% in 2011). 72% of medicines in the country are purchased with private funds, compared with 25-40% in Europe. Those who cannot pay or get to a government clinic should seek alternative treatments.
Sooner or later, health must obey the rules of the market, then the law of supply and demand will bring effective "technologically advanced biology" to the first place. At the same time, the centralized collection and processing of data will be controlled by the state, but their study, as well as the production of biotechnological drugs, will be entirely transferred to the private sector. Perhaps, over time, the state will show an interest in strengthening its role in such an important and politically significant industry, consolidate analytics and production, and health care will become a national project. Shopping and entertainment centers, symbols of culture and leisure of the first decades of the 21st century, will quickly adjust to the new vector - health - and offer a completely new set of goods and services.
The picture of the future may look like this: by 2065, shopping and recreation centers (TOTs), which emerged as a result of public-private partnerships, became the backbone of the Russian health care system. In Yekaterinburg, a city widely known for its specialists in computational biology, the largest TOC - Babylon - provides a huge selection of samples of "designed life". Here is one of its visitors - Victoria - an elderly, but beautiful-looking lady with cancer, but not suffering from it. Thanks to an individualized treatment plan and modified products, cancer practically does not affect a woman's quality of life. Victoria's hand has a tattoo - an implanted sensor that monitors her condition; when the time comes for the procedures, the drawing starts to glow. To confirm the purchase of medically modified vegetables in the grocery store, offered by the same health sensor, you need to go through genome recognition - it's no more difficult than leaving a fingerprint. A visit to the TOC is also a kind of social exit, an opportunity to show yourself and your beautiful biotechnological body (Victoria's prosthetic shin is a real work of art, first shown to the public at the opening of the Augmented Olympic Games in 2064).
