Genomic diagnostics will be a revolutionary game-changer in preventative medicine. Such technologies certainly would alter the deterministic landscape of inherited traits: if you know that you have a disease which might kill you, you can act on that knowledge. Most disease processes are detected too late.

Biomedical interventions will likely prolong higher quality of life and reduce the need for the crude chemical and mechanical interventions of traditional medicine.

So on those fronts, technology could ‘kill’ healthcare.

On the other hand, healthcare encompasses a lot more than just pathology. Technological advancement can create new opportunities for new diseases. Plus these technologies could be misused.

When ventilators and vasopressors first evolved, they held the promise of saving life. Over time, however, the use of these technologies has extended beyond their original purposes. That’s not necessarily bad, but it demonstrates that technological advancement isn’t linear or completely predictable.

Healthcare is probably a lot like Oatmeal: push away one glob of the bowl and another part slugs into the void.