I do not know about you, but some of my favorites gifts are the ones that are made just for me. It could be my name engraved in a piece of jewelry or a calendar filled with family photos. Quite simply, these objects are the dearest, because they were carefully thought out for me. The arena of precision medicine is simplistic in spirit, but there is exquisite complexity in the technology to deliver this medicine. With each passing year, the ability to pinpoint the problem and fine tune treatments is moving at a fast clip. Unfortunately, for many with chronic or life threatening conditions such as cancer, the pace of science cannot move fast enough. The benefits of precision medicine, three technologies that enable precision medicine, and the field of personalized medicine will be discussed.
Precision Medicine
According to Christensen, Grossman, and Hwang (2009), precision medicine is part of a continuum and is “the provision of care for diseases that can be precisely diagnosed, whose causes are understood, and which consequently can be treated with rules-bases therapies that are predicatively effective” (p. 44). It takes years of research and trial and error to get to this point, but it is a destination worth making. The are several benefits to precision medicine and these benefits may be found across healthcare organizations. It is hard to dispute that saving time, money and lives is not a very good thing. First, patient and providers are able to save time by swiftly moving from the diagnosis to treatment with the highest probability of working (Christensen et al., 2009). Next, reducing the amount of resources (time and cost) spent on treatments that are not effective has a direct impact on the financial implications of provid...
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With better and upgraded technology, doctors can diagnose, treat and send a patient home faster than ever before.
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Over the years the medical field has always brought together the best and brightest of society to help those in need. From treating cancer and delivering babies to dealing with heart attacks, doctors have developed technology and improved techniques. The three main changes that are revolutionizing the medical field are electronic medical records, population science and clinical practice guidelines. With the help of advanced technology, evaluating patients on a large scale, physicians can view the death rate, life span and frequency of illness throughout the healthcare system. On an individual basis, the physician can treat an illness. When the entire population is considered, issues such as cancer, heart disease and obesity are a growing epidemic. Population science can allow doctors to look at a large-scale way to cure these epidemics instead of just treating an individual. These epidemiological principles are now used in clinical studies to make the evaluation of medical procedures better.
The Johns Hopkins Individualized Health Initiative will bring together physicians, scientists, engineers, and information experts to connect and analyze huge databases of clinical information, plus new data sources such as DNA sequences, methylation analyses, RNA expression levels, protein structures, and high-tech images. The initiative will help doctors to customize treatment for the individual patient, reduce unnecessary (and often painful) testing, recommend behavioral changes,
Hafner, Katie. "Redefining Medicine with Apps and iPads." LexisNexis® Academic & Library Solutions. The New York Times, 9 Oct. 2012. Web. 05 Nov. 2013.
Many doctors, researchers, and engineers have been asked, “What prevents you from creating personalized medicines now”? There are many things that interfere with them being able to create personalized medicines, whether it’s because of the expensive material needed or because of the patient’s thought on the process.
Jose Baselga, a lead Physician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York said, “The next 10 years are expected to usher in unprecedented advances in oncology, including molecularly driven diagnostic and therapeutic developments, whole genome sequencing that results in true precision-based medicine, survivorship care plans that address long-term quality of life concerns, and team-based, cross-disciplinary approaches to research.”(Advances in Medical). This educated guess by Dr. Baselga can lead us to believe that our education about cancer grows with every new account and new procedure that we complete. In the next decade, our understanding of Oncology will be revolutionized in the hope that it will bring us closer to our intended goal of defeating this monstrous disease. Oncology is a flourishing field that is and will be in high demand in the 21st Century because when a problem has been confirmed to be present the human task force will go to various lengths in order to find a solution. Now that Oncology has found a way to presently deal with cancer such as chemotherapy, addressing long term effects of those solutions will be an area that will be focused on as Oncology takes steps forwards towards a cure. Another concentration in Oncology that will develop in the next 10 years will be the prevention of
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With today’s technology, we are capable of doing countless features such as coming up with new medical innovations to treat diseases and other medical related issues. Since we now
Upbin, Bruce. "IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 08 Feb. 2013. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.
care outcomes help to control costs? It is not possible to determine the accuracy amongst