By Paul House

Today Dr. Joseph Sung, Vice-Chancellor Designate of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), delivered a speech on the advancements in medical diagnostics. Dr. Sung earned his PhD in biomedical science from Calgary University (1992), and his MD from CUHK (1997) where he currently teaches. Dr. Sung has published over 600 articles in professional journals and written over 15 books.

In his speech Dr. Sung outlined the history of endoscopy (the process of diagnosing diseases of digestion). The history progressed from using surgery, to cameras, to fiber optics, ultrasonography, and finally capsule endoscopy (swallowing a small camera in a capsule the size of antibiotics). The history was fascinating and revealed the progress made over the last 200 years from cutting someone open to diagnose their problem to receiving images that can be magnified 1100 times.

The last technology of capsule endoscopy currently holds the most promise, however, it is still hampered by two defects: the first is not being able to track the capsule in the body, and the second is a short battery life, often just 6-8 hours. Dr. Sung challenged Tsinghua engineers to create solutions to these problems. Further, Dr. Sung presented a display which projected technology that could create a new field of tele-medicine. Basically a patient could swallow a capsule in their home that could then send images to a doctor. The doctor could then remotely diagnose the patient, and use robotic technology in the capsule to either deliver medicine or even suture a wound. Although Dr. Sung admitted that such technology is far in the future, the presentation gave an inspiring challenge for any future engineer to work closely with doctors and help revolutionize the field medicine and therapeutics.

(Photo by Guo Haijun)