Project Lead the Way (PLTW) is a very large portion of life at the Ann Richards School. It is a required course in grades 6th, 7th, and 8th that provides students with the opportunity to get a taste of the major job fields available. Once you reach high school, you will have to pick a specific pathway, (biomedical science, Media Technology, or Engineering) that should help jump-start your future career.

This year, we get to have a little more freedom and choice over the assignments we do. Over the course of this school year, I have completed almost 5 different modules , each from different pathways. Each module shows you what that pathway could be like, and it helps you decide what you really want to do later. One module that really stuck out to me was “Medical Innovations of the Future’’, from the Biomedical pathway.

This module really made me think about how things are going to be 15,20, or even 100 years from now. Medicine and health are two very important components to human life, and the possibilities of how it could change for better or worse sparks my curiosity.
The actual assignment had my group do a bit of research over the topic, and then create a visual representation to help others understand the topic as well .

After completing the module, I realized that I actually did learn something. I found it really interesting that doctors and people in the health field plan to completely change medicine with a digital approach in as little as 20 years from now. Even though I thought it was beyond cool when I first saw it, but after thinking about if for some time, I asked myself, “What’s wrong with the medicine we have now?” It seems to work just fine now, and even though a more technological way of thinking may seem the most innovative, is it really the most efficient choice?

The future of medical innovation is a complex topic, that I don’t think I can fully analyze just yet. But as I slowly gather more and more knowledge with age, I’ll hopefully one day be able to understand and be apart of it completely.