Midjourney recently revealed plans for a scanner with the goal that "with enough early imaging in the future, the world could avoid 30% of all deaths and 50% of all healthcare costs" (link to the announcement: https://www.midjourney.com/medical/blogpost)
What are the benefits of this, what are the actual intended outcomes / improvements, and what might (realistically) be achieved (and on what timescale)?
Do less developed countries have the required infrastructure for this scanner? What are the bottlenecks for making this (or something like it) available globally? High income countries received the Moderna and BioNTech / Pfizer covid vaccines (both mRNA, required to be stored at -20 degrees celsius) vs low/middle income countries received AstraZenica (non-mRNA, requires to be stored at 2-8 degrees celsius) because they didn't have the infrastructure to store mRNA vaccines at the required temperature.
How much of a bottleneck is diagnosis vs treatment? As in, if (hypothetically) everyone on earth had access to early detection, what would scaling our infrastructure to meet that new demand look like, and how realistically can it be achieved (what would need to change)? Would drug discovery become focused on treating a different / less critical class of ailments e.g., would finding an effective treatment for [common/widespread upstream condition] become more urgent than treating [the severe downstream disease it leads to]?
Just trying to understand what it means. Would love to hear your general thoughts on this, and about what is technically different / relevant about it