Internet of beings:

The dream of digitizing human bodies for healthcare (and the nightmare)

- FRANCESCO GRILLO

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, a spacecraft and its crew are shrunk to microscopic size and injected into the body of an injured astronaut to remove a life-threatening blood clot from his brain. The Academy Award-winning movie — later developed into a novel by Isaac Asimov — seemed like pure fantasy at the time. However, it anticipated what could be the next revolution in medicine: the idea that ever-smaller and more sophisticated sensors are about to enter our bodies, connecting human beings to the internet.

This “internet of beings” could be the third and ultimate phase of the internet's evolution. After linking computers in the first phase and everyday objects in the second, global information systems would now connect directly to our organs. According to natural scientists, who recently met in Dubai for a conference titled Prototypes for Humanity, this scenario is becoming technically feasible. The impact on individuals, industries, and societies will be enormous.