UAE | Health
Machine to forecast human health
A machine may be able to forecast a person's health a decade from now based on bio-electrical readings taken from his or her body, a UK researcher suggests.
- By Nina Muslim, Staff Reporter
- Published: 00:01 August 26, 2007
Dubai: A machine may be able to forecast a person's health a decade from now based on bio-electrical readings taken from his or her body, a UK researcher suggests.
Preliminary findings of a long-term study by Aaron Ward-Atherton, Lord of Witley and Hurcott and homeopathy consultant to the UK government, suggest that the German-made machine, which reads the body's bio-electrical signals, forecast chronic conditions the individual was likely to develop.
Ward-Atherton presented his findings at a recent complementary medicine conference in Dubai, organised by the Registration Consul of Homeopathy UK. "We found similarities in the bar graph patterns of patients taken before and after.
"The research project seems to suggest chronic diseases such as heart failure, diabetes, spine degeneration [could be predicted]," he said. He said he has been collecting data on 9,000 patients for the past 20 years in his private practice.
Parameters
He said he and his partner found that early and later bio-electrical bar graph pattern readings of patients who developed certain chronic diseases were similar, depending on the disease.
He said he hoped to update and publish the study, by liaising with a reputable medical institute to design the parameters of the study, saying the present findings did not account for differences in reading due to environmental factors.
Nevertheless, Ward-Atherton remains excited.
"It would be immensely valuable if the findings turned out to be true. What doctor today can forecast what illness we get in 10 years' time? It would help us prevent diseases before they occurred," he said.
Dr Sassan Behjat, former director for alternative and complementary medicine at the UAE Ministry of Health and consultant to the Dubai Government, acknowledged the value of the research but remained sceptical any machine could predict a person's health down the road.
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