Having worked passionately for 15+ years in Medicine, I felt that I yearned to do something a little bit different, something that satisfies my curiosity and creativity, maybe something that helps to inform me and others what our world will look like in the future. That's when I took on the challenge of being the editor & expert relationship manager at Supertrends.
I love the fact that I can still be in touch with my academic background when I am trying to understand and reach out to the experts in the most exciting fields. I also love the diverse and enthusiastic team at Supertrends. The best of all, I get to have a peek into the future, and I am at the position of helping many others to get the opportunity to look into the future.
Which innovations will emerge in your industry in 2022? A look at the Supertrends timeline reveals predictions such as “NASA’s space probe collides with an asteroid” in a manner similar to the popular Netflix movie “Don’t Look Up”, “Hyperimaging and AI provide humans with X-ray vision”, and “First commercial flight of a passenger air taxi”. In fact, the advances in technology may exceed your expectations in many areas. Let’s take a look at the most striking innovations that we can expect in 2022.
Healthcare industry: COVID-19, next-generation vaccines, and digitalization
Innovations...
In 2021, a 50-year-old challenge – the protein folding problem – was solved by AI, starch was produced synthetically from air, the world’s first 3D-printed steel bridge opened in Amsterdam, and one in four people in the US used cannabis.
These are some of the many predictions on the Supertrends timeline of the future that were fulfilled this year, while some others were not. In the following, we will look at the breakthroughs, the trends that moved faster than expected, the trends being pushed backward, and the trends you should keep an eye on as 2021 draws to a close.
The...
Pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers pollute rivers, oceans, air, and soil. Yet small farmers rely on them to produce food. Researchers from Singapore are working on ways to improve the efficiency of these tools and reduce pollution at the same time.
Disruptive technology for a more sustainable agriculture
In an age when sustainability is becoming a major concern, traditional agriculture faces a dilemma between preserving resources and meeting the increasing demand for food. This is where innovative technology comes into play. DiSTAP (Disruptive & Sustainable Technologies...
Not many people know how dangerous sepsis is. Even fewer people know that there is no specific therapy available to treat sepsis. Sepsis, a disorder that is developed from infections, can lead to limb amputations and deaths in a matter of days. For decades, it has remained one of the deadliest and costliest medical conditions. Now a startup is getting one step closer to finding an innovative therapy.
Finding an innovative approach
Computer illustration of a cutaway view of the human cell membrane. The yellow channels are aquaporins.
Aquaporin is a channel protein found in plants,...
How can farmers, especially small farmers, benefit from a modern technology like AI? With this question in mind, Supertrends interviewed Zeid Sinokrot, the founder and CEO of Palmear, who is developing an AI-powered tool to help small palm tree farmers detect a dangerous pest.
The red palm weevil: A global threat that is hard to detect
“The red palm weevil has become a global threat and demands a global strategy to eradicate it.”
– Jose Graziano da Silva, Head of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
Originally endemic to South Asia, the Red Palm Weevil (RPW) attacks...
Gao Yuhong, an agriculture professor at the College of Animal Science and Technology, Hebei Agriculture University in China, has been working almost exclusively on sheep farming for the last few years. Why sheep farming? “Sheep farming is the last frontier in the Chinese livestock industry,” Gao told Supertrends in an interview.
Growing production and demand
A sheep farm Gao has visited
Mutton and lamb meat hold a special place in the Chinese culinary culture. They are not only delicacies but are also considered to be especially nutritious in traditional Chinese medicine. In line with...
In many developed countries, healthcare has become an unsustainable business in recent years, partly due to the aging population and prevalence of chronic diseases. In the US, healthcare spending grew 4.6 percent in 2019 alone, amounting to US$3.8 trillion, or 18 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, this increase in spending did not translate into better patient care, nor has it reduced resource scarcity and imbalance in the healthcare industry. How can we transform the healthcare sector to make it more efficient and sustainable? Artificial intelligence (AI) will play...
While many human activities affect the environment in negative ways, nature’s solutions often are more efficient and sustainable. How do plants and animals purify water? What can we learn from them about filtration? With these questions in mind, Supertrends talked to two executives from Aquaporin, a water tech company delivering innovative technology based on nature’s own water filter.
Aquaporins: the truly natural water filters
The cells in Aquaporins are channel proteins that facilitate the transport of water across cells. Through aquaporins, cells in plants, animals, and...
On 13 September 2021, World Sepsis Day will be observed for the tenth time. Sepsis, a disorder that is caused by infections, can lead to limb amputations and deaths in a matter of days. The condition kills at least 11 million people every year globally. However, the condition is still not well known, with only from 7 to 50 percent of respondents being familiar with the term, and many having an incorrect understanding of the condition. Supertrends asked four experts to comment on current sepsis-related trends and challenges.
COVID-19 and viral sepsis
Traditionally, bacterial infections...
Going in for surgery in 2030 could look like this: the patient is greeted by a smiling robot receptionist and asked to fill in personal information. Then the patient is led to a wardroom that has been disinfected by a service robot. On the day of surgery, the surgeon is in the operation room; but rather than standing next to the patient, he sits at a console, from where he can view the operation field and control his surgical-assistance robot to perform the surgery through a tiny incision. This vision of the future may not be too far off the mark. Already today, different robots are taking...
Although stories revolving around long life and eternal youth have always been told throughout human history, most of us accept aging as a completely natural process. But if it is possible for some species, such as a certain type of jellyfish, to be biologically “immortal”, why not humans? As our understanding of biological processes improve, scientists have started to take on aging from a whole different viewpoint.
The Seven Revolutions in Healthcare That Will Impact Your Life – Part 5
Read Part 4 – mRNA Vaccines Mark a New Era in Medicine
How long can we live?
Only...
Since the beginning of this century, the world has witnessed SARS in China, H1N1 (swine flu) in Mexico and the US, MERS in the Middle East, Ebola in West Africa, Zika across the American continent, and for the last one and half years, COVID-19 as a global pandemic. mRNA therapeutics may become our new weapons against viral infections and many other health issues.
The Seven Revolutions in Healthcare That Will Impact Your Life – Part 4
Read part 3 – The Human Brain, the Least Understood and Most Exciting Organ
The revolutionary mRNA vaccine
“We are witnessing the...
The world’s first 3D-printed metal bridge opened to the public on 15 July 2021. The futuristic design of the smart bridge adds a modernist flair to one of the oldest canals in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. (Head image credit: Adriaan de Groot)
The challenge of a 3D-printed metal bridge
A 3D-printed metal bridge being installed in central Amsterdam (Image credit: Merlin Moritz)
Metal 3D printing has gained massive interest in recent years. It enables manufacturers to advance more quickly from the design to the final product and facilitates a more flexible and complex design approach....
Paul survived a car crash but was paralyzed because of a spinal cord injury. In the hospital, doctors inserted an implant into his brain and another implant to the end of his spine. The two implants were connected and formed a channel to communicate the brain signals to the lower part of the spinal cord that is still functional. Paul was able to walk again.
The above is an imagined story, but it may well happen in the future. Neuroscientists and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk are experimenting with new approaches to repair damaged neural connections currently considered untreatable.
The...
