ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY FOR MEDICINE - Life at the Nanoscale: Atomic Force Microscopy of Live Cells - page 413

Chapter 20
ATOMIC FORCE MICROSCOPY FOR
MEDICINE
Shivani Sharma a,b and James K. Gimzewski a,b,c
a Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
b California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
c International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics Satellite (MANA),
National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Tsukuba, Japan
[e-mail]
20.1 INTRODUCTION
Because of increasing healthcare costs, changing demographics and rapid
growth in chronic illnesses, it is very likely that many healthcare systems
around the world will become unsustainable by 2015. Worldwide healthcare
spending is expected to grow from 9% of worldwide Gross Domestic Product
to 15% by 2015, and by 2050 the world's population older than 60 years
will triple from 600 million to over 2 billion. Moreover, the number of people
in US only with a chronic illness will grow from 118 million in 1995 to 157
million in 2020 (World Health Organization). Therefore, new technologies
will be needed to overcome these challenges such as implementation
of nanotechnology applications for healthcare ( www.OECD.org ) . In
particular, the development of a wide spectrum of emerging nano-enabled
technologies may hold great promise for medicine and healthcare beneits
by complementing and enhancing the current diagnostic and therapeutic
capabilities of existing healthcare systems. Indeed, nanotechnology could be
the crucial enabling technology that will turn the promise of theranostics 1
into reality, i.e., personalized therapy customized to serve patient needs
based on their exact genetic and molecular diagnostics.