What areas of research are heating up in 2014? How will patients access health care differently in the coming year?

We asked experts across UC San Francisco to identify what's ahead in digital health, basic science research, cancer treatments, health care access and other key areas. Judging by their answers, it will be an exciting year that could lead to more precise, effective and even preventive treatment of human diseases.

Check out some of the top, cutting-edge trends for 2014:

"The next big thing in personal medical technology will becreating a next generation of truly useful devices and sensors that cansend data to careproviders. The only way this technology is going to revolutionize health is if it actually tellsdoctors what they really need to know abouttheir patients when they need to know it."

Michael Blum, MD, chief medical information officer of UCSF Medical Center

The marketplace is awash in wearable medical technology, but these devices wont really help doctors treat their patients until we figure out how to manage all that data.

At the level of design, that means wearable heart rate monitors that dont merely mimic the look of an EKG, but also collectclinically usabledata on heart signals. At the level of organization, it means collecting the kind of data that a physician finds meaningful, and not just what seems cool to consumers.

Figuring all this out is the next big challenge for digital health.

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Top Trends in Health Sciences for 2014

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