A Blog Is Born: The Human OS

Spectrum's new biomedical engineering blog will chronicle bold attempts to understand and debug the human body

1 min read

A Blog Is Born: The Human OS
Photo: Dan Saelinger

It’s high time for a blog about all the ways engineers are taking on the messy, fleshy human body. Why? Because they have the technology! Bionics aren’t reserved for the Six Million Dollar Man anymore. Now everyone can be better, stronger, faster.  

Biomedical engineers have designed sensors that can be worn on your wrist, plastered to your skin, or implanted in your body to collect reams of biometric information. They’ve invented machines that can decode your entire genome for about $1000 and in just a few hours. They’re building big data platforms to figure out what it all means. And they’re manufacturing miniaturized electronic devices that doctors can affix to organs or nerves to control—and improve—their function. 

The Human OS, the newest blog from IEEE Spectrum, builds on our coverage of the tech that’s enabling a more precise and personalized type of medicine. Last June we published a special report, “Hacking the Human OS,” which declared that medicine has always sought to understand the human body’s operating system—and that now we’re learning how to fix the bugs. Going forward, we’ll be chronicling new, bold attempts to both understand and debug. 

We promise to give you technical details, critical analysis, and enough human interest to keep things, well, interesting. Stick around. 

And follow your Human OS bloggers! 

Megan Scudellari: @Scudellari

Eliza Strickland: @newsbeagle

Emily Waltz: @EmWaltz

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