Human health in a modern world: can technology solve the mismatch?

By many measures, human health is better now than at any time in history. The human population continues to increase and life expectancy is longer than ever (Dong, Milholland, & Vijg, 2016). Yet there is a problem. Much of these gains have been achieved by eliminating illness due to infection, making childbirth safer, and improving care and outcomes for chronic illnesses such as heart disease and cancer. Beneath these positive outcomes is a pandemic of chronic illnesses such as type 2 diabetes. These chronic illnesses are spreading across the globe from western countries to rapidly developing countries such as China and India (Collaborators, 2017).