From lifelike hands to gamified nudges, how technology is reshaping the future of healthcare

Whether designing a pair of robot pants or a prosthetic limb or a healthcare app, it’s important that people feel they’re getting a personalized upgrade—not just a solution. Consider prosthetic limbs. While this century has seen huge advancements in design and functionality, the not-so-distant future will deliver individualized, customized limbs that very much resemble and function like natural limbs for people, says Jeremy Brown, an associate professor at the Whiting School of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. “I think a prosthesis is sort of one of the most intimate human-robot interaction scenarios,” Brown said speaking at a Fast Company World Changing Ideas Conversation at the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center. “You’re actually building a device that’s supposed to replace the biological counterpart, and so how does someone look at this device and think about it as being their own limb?” [Photo: Poll Bravo for Johns Hopkins University] While 3-D printing will help craft appendages that look more lifelike, the technology inside these prosthetics is also getting much smarter, Brown said. The physical interface between brain and machine is also improving such that information is passed more seamlessly between the two. “Because of all the AI and data that we can get from these devices now, you can train this limb to do exactly what you want it to do,” he said. THE FUTURE OF EXOSKELTONS Retaining that human element is also important when designing wearable powered exoskeletons, like the assistive devices that Skip and Arc’teryx launched in 2024. The MO/GO (short for mountain goat) pants are like an e-bike, but for walking or hiking, said Anna Roumiantseva, chief product officer and co-founder of Skip, a wearable tech company that spun out of Google’s moonshot “X” division in 2023. [Photo: Poll Bravo for Johns Hopkins University] Though not designed for medical purposes, the device is designed to amplify the “incredibly well-optimized machine” that