The expert discussion ‘The Future of Medicine: The Human Brain and Digital Mind at the Heart of Scientific Discoveries’, which focuses on the development and introduction of the latest technologies in the healthcare system, took place during the ‘Russia Forum: Driving the Future’ at the Expo 2020 in Dubai. The session was organized by the Roscongress Foundation’s Healthy Life project with the support of the Russian Federal Medical-Biological Agency (FMBA).

The ‘Russia Forum: Driving the Future’ took place on 3–4 December as part of the National Day of the Russian Federation at the Expo 2020 in Dubai. The event was organized with the support of the Russian Ministry of Industry and Trade and the Roscongress Foundation.

The expert discussion was attended by Sberbank Deputy Chairman of the Management Board Olga Golodets; Novgorod Region Governor Andrey Nikitin; Director of the FMBA’s Federal Brain and Neurotechnology Centre Vsevolod Belousov; Managing Director for Key Research Programmes at the Artificial Intelligence Institute Viktor Gombolevsky; Deputy General Director of the Chumakov Federal Scientific Centre for Research and Development of Immune-and-Biological Products of the Russian Academy of Sciences Konstantin Chernov; Director of the Research Centre for Medical Genetics of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Sergey Kutsev. The event was moderated by Doctor TV Channel Editor-in-Chief and Russia 24 TV Channel Host Evelina Zakamskaya.

Modern medical sciences and high technologies are developing exponentially since public demand for a safe, high-quality, and long life are fundamentally dependent on them. Human intelligence is constantly searching for revolutionary technologies that can protect civilization from the threats and global challenges of the modern world.

In turn, scientific research seeks to find sustainable resistance to socially significant diseases. The introduction of cell and gene therapy technologies into clinical practice creates unprecedented opportunities for medicine in the fight against incurable diseases. As the prototype of natural intelligence, smart systems are broadly being integrated into various parts of our lives, processing arrays of scientific knowledge, freeing up cognitive resources, and simplifying human life. In addition, the human brain itself is the most important subject of scientific research.

Golodets said healthcare should be more human-centred in the future.

“The healthcare of the future will enable us to solve two main goals: to increase life expectancy and improve its quality. Digital services as well as scoring and predictive models will be able to identify the causes of diseases earlier and prevent their effects. The use of artificial intelligence models will make it possible to take a completely different look at the system for managing one’s own health,” Golodets said.

“The expert discussion was prepared by the Roscongress Foundation’s Healthy Life project in cooperation with the FMBA of Russia. Russian medical science has always had a strong scientific foundation and powerful potential, and thus today it is ready to meet the current challenges with a huge number of unique developments that must be integrated into the international scientific context,” Roscongress Foundation First Deputy Director for Development, Head of the Healthcare Directorate Anastasia Stolkova said.

During the event, participants discussed what discoveries in modern medical science can already confront the infectious and non-infectious threats of the modern world, how digital technologies and artificial intelligence come help us in life by taking medicine to the next level of technological progress, what latest achievements and developments in medical technologies can already contribute to a new quality of human life, and what horizons modern neuroscience is setting today to expand the resources of the brain.