Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Health Care of the Future: Guest Blog by A.R. Norris


Please welcome our special guest to Spacefreighters Lounge today, multi-published author A.R. Norris, who on October 11th released END OF ETERNITY, the final novel in the Telomere Trilogy. 

I am so excited to be hanging out at Spacefreighter's Lounge today. Oh, what to geek out about, what to geek out about? Hmm... I know! One of my favorite SF concepts to work on is healthcare and medical.

Diagnosing, treating, monitoring, all of it interests me. Maybe it's because my day job is researching all the cool advancements in the healthcare field. It's really fun to read a report or research study on a new technology or approach and then sit back and imagine what it will become in 50 or 100 years.

Most of these little tidbits I put into my blog on posts I call Science Update. It's an inconsistent post series, depending on what I find that's interesting. Now, in The Telomere Trilogy one of the main characters is a doctor, and gave me a great opportunity to include more of my ideas in my writing than usual.

Some of my favorites included in the story?

Portable Imaging Unit
This neato gadget fits in a med bag when the medical team is in the field. It folds out into a wand, ran over the injured part of the body and reads like a 3D CT scan.

Body Tome
This is a stationary chamber is similar to the MRI machine, but not only does it screen and diagnose the problem, it can do autonomous robotic surgery repair what's broken or torn. As it scans, a smaller 3D holographic form of the person materializes and highlights their injury points and recommends treatment or surgery.

Regeneration Treatment Chamber
For those things that are not broken, torn or otherwise obliterated, there's the regeneration chamber. The injured person lies in a tank of liquid medication that reacts to electric currents and special lighting to heal the wounds, bruises and infections.

Those are some of the big technologies, but there's also smaller things like  gel pads that when activated will stem blood flow and antiseptic spray with nano treating technology to sterilize and then prep wound edges for surgery by dissolving the damaged edges.

"Okay, breath A. R., breath." Sorry all, my geekfest ran away from me a little. Let me just include a short excerpt and call it a day. Of course, one commenter will win the first book in the trilogy, Revelations of Tomorrow. And if anyone wants to like my Facebook Fan Page (link below), they can enter an opportunity to win the whole trilogy.

Excerpt:
"Get him on the bed." She pulled the bed scanner from the ceiling and ran it across him from head to toe, then moved to his miniature image on the screen, on the bedrail's patient network system. "Severe lung damage, at least one tear... here." She made a mark. "Several broken bones along the rib and hip bones. Dislocated shoulder and serious bruising, well, all over."

She pushed the scanner up into its ceiling carriage. Gripping the small image, she turned it, eyeing his damages from all angles. She entered her treatment plan and sequence. "Get him in as soon as possible--"

He stirred and woke with a start. Trying to sit up, he cursed and rolled. She grabbed his upper body to prevent him from falling and his steely green eyes focused and glared.

"Telomere bitch." It was an injured whisper, but said with such venom Brenda flinched. "Don't touch me. I won't have you touching me."

"Too bad, Mr. Rafferty." Brenda pushed him down again, firm but careful of his injuries. "I can't let you die on my table."

She pulled out a sedative patch and rubbed it to activate the cells.

"I see him in you... Howell's blood through and through." He squinted at her. "Where is she? Where is the woman who let my baby girl die while she pined for that monster?"

"I'm right here, Rafferty." Noah stepped into view and braced the patient rail. "We'll talk once Dr. Bonney has done her job."

"I won't talk to you. I'll kill you is what I'll do." He winced and grasped his side but still pushed up. "I've waited forty years!"

Brenda pressed the patch to his neck and he dropped instantly. She glanced at her mother, recognized the masked expression. No, not her mother right now. Her captain right now. Over this last mission, she learned to respect that and after quick orders to her medics, began working.

"I'll let you know when he's done," Brenda said to her.

Purchase Links: All Romance, Amazon,  B&N, and Books on Board
Where to Find Me: Facebook, Blog, Website

Thanks so much, A.R., for making Spacefreighters Lounge one of your blog tour stops. 

Please leave a comment below for a chance to win the first Telomere Trilogy novel, REVELATIONS OF TOMORROW. And if you want a shot at the whole trilogy, you can "like" A. R.'s Facebook fan page at the link above.

~~*~~

13 comments:

  1. I love your science tidbits and I'm glad you ran with them. I'm getting tired of seeing just bacta-tanks and cure-all drugs out there. I'll be checking into your Science Updates blog too.

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  2. Thanks for a great blog! The excerpt is intriguing. The world of medical technology is one we SF writers have a hard time keeping ahead of. We can barely think it before someone in the real world has already done it!

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  3. I love reading up on some of the nano-tech advances and mixing them into my stories. My fave is a medi-Pac, known as a 'slap and stick' because it adheres to open wounds, disinfecting and healing, before being absorbed into the body once it's not needed.

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  4. Thanks Patchi! I think we see a lot of the same type of medical SF because not a lot of writers are experienced in the field. You get a lot of phycist, spacey, math geeks but not a lot with a background in the healthcare arena, so they fall back on some of the standards.

    LOL, truthfully, if I had a background in one of the above, I'd probably be too busy thinking quantum mechanics too!

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  5. I'm glad you liked the excerpt Donna! It IS so hard to keep up. Medical research and clinical technology advancements are evolving at such a fast pace! (Which is a good thing... just saying it makes it hard to keep thinking futuristic when stuff gets accomplished in our lifetime.)

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  6. Oh Pippa, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE all the nano-tech that is happening lately in the field. I just hope the nanos don't gang up and take over our bodies! Can you imagine a body snatcher scenario via Nano takeover?!

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  7. That rejuvenation unit sounds wonderful, I think I'd like a swim! LOL Great excerpt.

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  8. I think we're all anxious to see the medical technology in our favorite sci-fi novels become reality. Just recently, I was stuck in the dentist chair getting a filling (Ow!) and thought to myself, "There has got to be a better way to take care of this." Maybe in the future we'll have pain-free dentistry, accelerated healing, and who knows what else.

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  9. I know, Linda! That was my fav fav for this story.

    Oh my goodness, Allie, from your mouth (literally) to the researchers ears. I hate having work done at the dentist. Is it odd that the sound of drilling against my tooth bothers me more than the realization they're drilling my tooth?

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  10. Thanks for the post. Very cool material. I love when I get to these parts of the book because it allows you to really see where the author thinks our medical technology will will go.

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  11. Thanks Cray. I'm glad you liked the post.

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  12. I loved your post! I am a doctor and I want each one of the gadgets you listed ASAP! The medical technology we have today is great and keeps evolving, but the hard part is keeping the human factor in diagnosis and treatment of people. Just because we have the technology doesn't necessarily mean we should use it or that you would benefit from it! Thanks for the contest.

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  13. What a group of interesting ideas. I'm sure if we could ask people from the 19th century about our modern healthcare, they'd have the same perspective we have of the ideas on this blog.

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