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The Health-Tech Timeline
Medicine did not leap to the future overnight. It arrived one machine, one molecule and one idea at a time. This timeline lays out the milestones that got us here, the technologies already in use, and the directions researchers expect this decade. Filter it, open any milestone, and follow the source.
Foundations In use today On the horizon
Era
Field
Showing 14 of 14 milestones.
Sources
- The Nobel Prize in Physics 1901 (Roentgen, X-rays) The Nobel Prize
- Antimicrobial resistance World Health Organization, 2023
- Molecular Structure of Nucleic Acids Nature (Watson & Crick), 1953
- The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1979 (Computed Tomography) The Nobel Prize
- The Human Genome Project US National Human Genome Research Institute
- The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 (CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing) The Nobel Prize
- Continuous Glucose Monitoring US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases
- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Software as a Medical Device US Food and Drug Administration
- Consolidated telemedicine implementation guide World Health Organization, 2022
- Understanding mRNA vaccines US National Institutes of Health
- What is Gene Therapy? US Food and Drug Administration
- Screening Tests: Multi-cancer detection tests US National Cancer Institute
- Ethics and governance of artificial intelligence for health World Health Organization, 2024
- Global strategy on digital health 2020-2025 World Health Organization
Last reviewed: 2026-07-17
Keep exploring
Want the plain-language version of the technologies on this timeline? Flip through the innovation explainers, or test a headline against the evidence.