纳米技术将在许多方面影响医学实践。医学是高度复杂的,因此需要一段时间才能完全发挥作用,但许多益处几乎会立即显现。许多医疗问题都可以避免。更好的研究将大大提高我们对因果关系的理解,让我们用更少的努力过上更健康的生活方式。它将允许早期发现和治疗,并在问题演变为全面疾病之前纠正问题。根据TA-SWISS纳米技术项目协调员的说法,纳米技术最早将在2010年导致更高效的医疗诊断。纳米技术将能够在症状出现之前发现新疾病,并在几天内创造出治疗方法。它将有可能立即发现任何新的病原体。已经有一个项目正在进行中,对马尾藻海中每一次高潮的DNA进行排序。治愈一种新的传染病需要一些检测和阻止病原体的方法。 Robert Freitas has described over a dozen nanotechnology ways to disable or destroy pathogens. The tools of medicine will become cheaper and more powerful. High tech tools of medicine are naturally expensive to manufacture, especially if they must be kept sterile. With nanotechnology manufacturing system, the cost manufacture is unrelated to the complexity of the product. Design and testing will still be costly, but once designed, the tools can be manufactured in quantity. The incredibly small component size will allow new kinds of tools like a complete surgical robot that can be built smaller than a needle and chemical sensor that can be small enough to fit into a living cell.