Medical Billing Service’s Annual Health and Technology Scholarship Winner

Medical Billing Service is excited to announce Alexander Cona from St. John Fisher College as the winner of our Medical Billing Service’s Annual Health and Technology Scholarship. To apply for the scholarship, students had to write about their passion for health and technology. We are now accepting applications for the 2021 scholarship award.

Alexander’s Winning Essay

Health and technology are two inextricably linked fields that have forever coevolved and changed to make our lives better. These two distinct yet so intertwined fields have shaped history for thousands of years and changed the world, mostly for the better. Many people jump at the opportunity to combine these two fields to improve the lives of people all around the world. Figures such as Fleming who discovered penicillin or Fyodorov who discovered radial keratotomy made major discoveries that helped unite these two fields while vastly improving the lives of billions of people. This desire to use health and technology to improve lives has since increased dramatically thanks to the invention of computers and the informational revolution which makes easier access to old and new works alike. It is now easier than ever to delve into the field of health while utilizing the latest technology to accelerate discoveries and integrate them in treatments. But from where did my passion for these fields stem?

The idea of helping people other than myself has always had a profound effect on me. The golden rule by which my parents raised me, treat others how you want to be treated, has stuck with me throughout my life. It gave me a personal philosophy to follow and led to the feeling of having helped someone as being reward enough. However, it never feels like I can do enough. I have countless times watched the people I cared about suffer because of depression or unfortunate circumstances that were out of my control. This same suffering, I see countless places. When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, the pain and suffering in my dad’s eyes at the thought of losing my mom was heartbreaking. She recovered, but many others do not. I believe that the unity of health and technology have the power to prevent this suffering by finding a cure for each and every one of the causes. New cancer treatments are coming out every year, as are new medications for all ranges of diseases both psychological and physical. The people behind these new discoveries are the embodiment of the principle I wish to uphold. My passion for health and technology has stemmed from one thing, the desire to prevent people from going through what I have seen my friends and family go through many times. If I can contribute to this goal, even just a little, then I will be satisfied with myself and feel like I’ve finally done enough, because nothing is more heartbreaking than feeling powerless to help those you love.

The informational revolution of the twentieth and twenty-first century has given the public all the information they need at their fingertips. Things that one needed to look up using a book 40 years ago are now accessible in microseconds thanks to personal computers. Medical information, such as symptoms for diseases can be identified without a doctor’s visit. It can give one an idea of their health and what they might expect in the future with the current symptoms they have, which can give some peace of mind. While this is very helpful in diagnosing minor diseases and infections such as a stomach bug or the common cold, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Every person is different and their symptoms for one disease may perfectly match yours for another. While it is good to have this information at our fingertips, anything other than a slight fever, runny nose, or plugged ear should be taken care of by a medical provider, not by the internet. Although most illnesses are not serious, it is better to err on the safe side and see a professional just to make sure. However, there is a good method of tracking your health yourself that is now easier thanks to smart devices.

Keeping track of your daily habits like eating or exercising was next to impossible and involved a lot of journal entries and technology. Now, things like your blood pressure or heart rate are accessible on your wrist thanks to smartwatches and phones. They can even keep track of things like exercise or food intake and can compare your results to those of others in your range. For motivated people, this can have numerous benefits such as improving overall health and daily activities. For very forgetful people, this can also help them remember what they have to do as alarms can be set to remind them. Overall, this is a very positive relationship as it allows us to monitor our own health and make decisions to better it. This is not the only way that technology can help us improve our health.

Technology’s relationship for health may just help us repair or even replace damaged parts of our bodies, as well as cure all kinds of diseases. Recently, I wrote a research paper on where memories come from, and I found a very interesting primary article that uses a mathematical model to predict outputs in the hippocampus given inputs. The model worked very successfully and meant that this model could be used to develop a prosthesis that replaces a damaged hippocampus. It would allow people to form new short-term and long-term memories and improve their daily functions when previously they could not. This little tiny prosthesis will use the help of technology to improve health and restore function to a damaged part of the most complex organ in our body, the brain. As health and technology become more intertwined, the world will become a better place. New discoveries are happening at an accelerated rate thanks to the aid of technology and more and more people are joining the fields of health and technology to try to create a better future. I believe the future holds a very triumphant time in both of these fields, and that they will cure almost all known diseases and conditions. This is the future I want to live in, and the future that I want to help create.

Author: Mike Cynar

Mike Cynar brings buyers and sellers together by producing reviews and creating non biased webpages allowing users to share their experiences on various products and services. He and his staff write informative articles related to the medical field, legal, and other small business industries.