It’s hard to lay it on with a trowel how much healthcare will change over the next ten-twenty years due to developments in technology. With progress in genetics, imaging, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics, we are now reaching a very critical stage. Naturally, targeted therapies are now become very common. Medical innovations are ushering a new epoch of precision medicine and patient-tailored therapies.
Precision medicine is the new buzz word that is quiet frequently heard now days. It is a concept that has developed due to the integration of technology with the day to day practices of the healthcare vertical. Precision medicine is “an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.”
It is the future of medicine. Precision medicine can help doctors mold treatments to the requirements of individual patients once they get ill, rather than applying standard treatments procedures determined by extensive populations; this can be done by integrating deeper understanding of diseases with more affluent patient data and cutting-edge analytics. This approach also has the potential of leveraging analytics to identify patient risks even before the symptoms of the disease are demonstrated. Precision medicine has paved the path for combining business prospects with clinical health benefits. Both practices can result in substantially better patient outcomes at lesser costs for the patient and the entire healthcare system.
But for all of the intriguing questions genetic research is presently answering, it is raising exponentially more. Every technology and research have a few pit falls that need to be addressed to make it full proof; and with people’s lives at stake this becomes a pressing issue that needs to be taken care of. There are two major concerns namely; unstable or nonsecure legal and regulatory framework and the lack of access to relevant medical data. Other minor problems entail; limited ability to integrate data sources, continuous regulatory oversight in a rapid changing market environment, limited analytical power, and limited number of collaboration partners. Healthcare data to be leveraged needs to be secure, available and significant. These facts need to managed and executed correctly.
‘Precisely’, precision medicine will alter the way doctors’ practice and will quiver up the whole pharmaceutical value chain!