Each year, 50,000 people die in the US, 700,000 worldwide, from seemingly simple infections that have no drug to combat them. Worse, recent studies from the World Health Organization (WHO) found that antibiotic resistance is spreading throughout the world, all while our preparedness for future pandemics like the 2014-15 Eloba scare was found woefully inadequate. And while the number of documented diseases is growing, the number of newly discovered cures is shrinking every decade.

This is the world our pharmaceutical industry is struggling against.

We're entering a future where medications will be customized to your DNA and your future health will be predicted at birth. Welcome to the future of precision medicine.

In the last chapter of our Future of Health series, we explored the threats humanity currently faces in the form of global antibiotic resistance and future pandemics, as well as the innovations our pharmaceutical industry is working on to combat them. But the downside of these innovations is in their mass market design—drugs designed to treat the many instead of designed to cure the one.

To end permanent, physical injuries, our society has to make a choice: Do we play God with our human biology or do we become part machine?

Thus far in our Future of Health series, we've focused on the future of pharmaceuticals and curing diseases. And while illness is the most common reason we make use of our healthcare system, the less common reasons can often be the most grave.

100 billion neurons. 100 trillion synapses. 400 miles of blood vessels. Our brains frustrate science with their complexity. In fact, they remain 30 times more powerful than our fastest supercomputer.

In two decades, access to the best healthcare will become universal, regardless of your income or where you live. Ironically, your need to visit hospitals, and even meet with doctors at all, will decline over those same two decades.

Welcome to the future of decentralized healthcare.

The future of healthcare is moving outside of the hospital and inside your body.

Thus far in our Future of Health series, we discussed the trends set to reshape our healthcare system from a reactive to proactive service industry focused on preventing illness and injury. But what we haven't touched on in detail is the end user of this revitalized system: the patient. What will it feel like to live inside a healthcare system obsessed with tracking your well-being?