Future of medicine under the microscope

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--Experts in fields such as regenerative medicine; personalized health; information and data-driven health; and neuromedicine are gathering here this week for several days of discussions about the future of medicine. Organized under the appropriate rubric of "FutureMed," leaders in these fields, plus nearly 70 paying participants, are taking part in Singularity University's first FutureMed executive program. For two years, Singularity University (SU)--created by futurist Ray Kurzweil and X Prize CEO Peter Diamandis--has been bringing people together at NASA Ames Research Center here to discuss what are called "exponentially growing" technologies--things like 3D printing, self-organizing molecular circuits, advanced robotics, and more. But over two 10-week summer courses with graduate-student level participants and several 10-day programs aimed at successful executives, the institution has spread its focus across a wide variety of disciplines. FutureMed is SU's first attempt at homing in on a single field and having top-level discussions about where that field is heading and how it may change the world.