These are the standout breakthroughs in tech that may revolutionize health care

The past year was an exciting one for medical advances. Here are five that I think will help revolutionize health care:

Artificial technology in the fields of cardiology and radiology for starters. A lung-cancer screening program called Sybil emerged from the MIT and Mass General Hospital that has an incredible 90% sensitivity to picking up early lung cancer even before it forms a characteristic nodule.

Rather than compete with doctors, AI will be a tool they can use to augment performance and decrease red tape much as a co-pilot functions on a sophisticated airliner.

 Digital interfaces. Implants in the human brain have restored vision, speech, hearing and mobility to those who have lost it.  Technology has reached the point where a paralyzed person can not only walk but feel his legs again.

Wearable monitors using artificial intelligence also can detect problems faster than a patient can, allowing quicker medical intervention. InfoBionic, for example, has a cardiac device that can feed data directly to a physician to help diagnose a rhythm problem or see if a treatment is working.

 Animal organ usage. The world of transplantation has made tremendous strides in 2023, many occurring in my own institution, NYU Langone Health. Dr. Robert Montgomery, chief of surgery and himself a heart recipient, has implanted two pig kidneys  (the first in 2021, the second in 2023) successfully in a human recipient. In the latter case, the patient lived on for more than two months, as the transplanted kidney functioned and made urine.