We’ve dreamed of something as powerful as MRI, and as casual as a trip to the spa, and we’re unveiling a path to that - today.
My reaction to Midjourney Medical happened in about four seconds and went like this:
Holy shit, this is so cool!! Finally something inspiring in tech.
Wait, that doesn’t make any sense.
Wow.
Wait. …What?
Damn, this is straight out of Gattaca!!
Their pitch is a full-body ultrasonic scanner you step into like a warm bath. Sixty seconds, no radiation, no claustrophobic tube. And it’s supposed to open as a literal spa in San Francisco in 2027.
I’m still not sure what to think of this. Part of me thinks it’s ridiculous, part of me thinks it’s one of the cooler things I’ve seen from a tech company in a while. Cheaper, easier body imaging sounds amazing if they can actually pull it off.
I don’t know if it’s the aesthetics or the theme, but it made me think of the movie Gattaca right away. A beautiful wellness experience that scans your body and creates an extremely detailed record of what’s happening inside you? Cool. Also, yikes. Imagine all that data getting in the wrong hands.
The scans are a side-effect. You barely think of them when going to the spa. But suddenly, you have a huge library of data about your health.
I like the idea of making scans affordable so that you don’t need to wait for months or years, or pay thousands of dollars, but I hope this doesn’t turn into another “for the greater good” data-harvesting operation where your insides eventually become something to resell, partner with, or quietly share with governments, insurers, employers, advertisers, or whoever else shows up with a check.
Hopefully they do it right and keep the data private, locked down, and boring (the way medical data should be). I hope so, because the idea itself is really cool! Time will tell.