From new vaccines to improved diagnostic tests: Here are some key health innovations in 2023

Doctors and bioengineers have made significant strides globally this past year with innovative new technologies and treatments in health.

Gert-Jan Oskam was told that he would never be able to walk again after a biking accident twelve years ago that damaged his spinal cord.

In May, doctors in Switzerland successfully established a wireless connection between implants in his brain and his spine, these sent signals which stimulated movement in his legs.

For the 40-year-old paraplegic patient, the slow steps mean everything.

“The brain implant picked up what I was doing with my hips so there was like the best outcome,” said Oskam.

The same team of surgeons, neurologists and electronics experts again successfully helped a Parkinson’s disease patient walk unassisted in November using 16 electrodes over the spine wired to a pacemaker in the abdomen.

In another health innovation in the UK, researchers invented a new test for cancer diagnosis, by analysing compounds in a patient’s breath through special tubes.

According to the lead scientist of the team, Professor George Hanna from Imperial College London, different tumours expel different gases so they can be identified in our breath.

Previous trials have demonstrated 90 per cent accuracy and it may detect gut, pancreas and oesophagus cancers at an earlier stage.

“So detecting those compounds gives an indication of what type of cancer, and whether the patient has cancer or no cancer,” said Hanna, the Head of Surgery and Cancer, Imperial College London.

The team hopes that the tubes will be able to make treatments more effective.

There are hopes that developments that happened this year will also help in the fight against malaria.

In 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed the first malaria vaccine, RTS,S.

This year, it endorsed a second malaria vaccine called R21 Matrix M.

Research suggested that the vaccine reduced symptomatic cases of malaria by 75 per cent after three doses. Both vaccines are expected to be rolled out in several African countries in 2024.

In 2022, Africa was home to 233 million malaria cases and 580,000 malaria deaths.

This year also marked a milestone in Alzheimer’s disease research.

Scientists have struggled to develop drugs to combat Alzheimer’s for decades.

But Lecanemab by the pharmaceutical firm Eisai, and donanemab by Eli Lilly have finally gained regulatory approvals in some regions.

Trials showed donanemab slowed the deterioration in memory by 20 per cent and the decline in everyday activities by 40 per cent.

Lacanemab was shown to be effective at slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s by 27 per cent.

The drugs are designed to help break down the amyloid plaque that builds in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease.

“We have a very clear path to reducing the severity and slowing disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr Stephanie Fowler, a neuroscientist at University College London’s UK Dementia Research Institute and Drug Discovery Institute.

For more on this story, watch the video in the media player above.

Video editor • Roselyne Min