Internet of beings: the dream of digitising human bodies for healthcare (and the nightmare)

Francesco Grillo, Bocconi University

“This “internet of beings” could be the third and ultimate phase of the internet’s evolution. After linking computers in the first phase and everyday objects in the second, global information systems would now connect directly to our organs. According to natural scientists, who recently met in Dubai for a conference titled Prototypes for Humanity, this scenario is becoming technically feasible. The impact on individuals, industries and societies will be enormous.

The idea of digitising human bodies inspires both dreams and nightmares. Some Silicon Valley billionaires fantasise about living forever, while security experts worry that the risks of hacking bodies dwarf current cybersecurity concerns. As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Internet of Beings, this technology will have at least three radical consequences.

First, permanent monitoring of health conditions will make it far easier to detect diseases before they develop. Treatment costs much more than prevention, but sophisticated tracking could replace many drugs with less invasive measures – changes in diet or more personalised exercise routines.

Millions of deaths could be prevented simply by sending alerts in time. In the US alone, 170,000 of the 805,000 heart attacks each year are “silent” because people don’t recognise the symptoms.

Second, the sensors – better called biorobots, since they’ll probably be made of gel – are becoming capable of not just monitoring the body but actively healing it. They could release doses of aspirin when detecting a blood clot, or activate vaccines when viruses attack.

The mRNA vaccines developed for COVID may have opened this frontier. Advances in gene editing technologies may even lead to biorobots that can perform microsurgery with minuscule protein-made “scissors” that repair damaged DNA.

Third, and most important, medical research and drug discovery will be turned on its head. Today, scientists propose hypotheses about substances that might work against certain conditions, then test them through expensive, time-consuming trials. In the internet of beings era, the process reverses: huge databases generate patterns showing what works for a problem, and scientists work backwards to understand why. Solutions will be developed much more quickly, cheaply and precisely.”