I received word last night that a retired colleague and friend died yesterday. Cancer sucks. I know there will be a time in the future when we will be able to beat cancer consistently. Even before that, I think we will develop very early methods of detecting it. We might prick our fingers once a month and hundreds of health concerns might be detected early on, or maybe we just go to the bathroom and the toilet itself will detect concerns by doing a daily water test of our waste.

Essentially, early detection will help us detect the cancer early and we can knock it out before it kicks the hell out of us. This will likely happen before we actually beat cancer altogether… we just become really good at detecting it early. “Kill a snake when it is small,” my grandfather used to say.

My wife has an Apple Watch. In a decade or so, most of us will have a device like this that will monitor our health and do daily diagnostics for us. It will monitor our heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, sleep patterns, and a whole series of other biometrics that will create a baseline for us, and let us know when things aren’t at homeostasis. We will get medical feedback that will become an early warning system for us when our readings are off.

Imagine getting a little warning from a wearable device that tells us that our heart is doing something that has been detected in thousands of people a month or so before they got a heart attack, and suggesting you go for a checkup… and sharing this data with your doctor. Imagine learning that you have the flu before feeling the symptoms, and this device tells you to stay home and not spread your contagion.

We aren’t there yet, but I look forward to the day when we can count on an early detection device saving our lives, and extending the lives of those we love and care for.