Personalized Medicine and Patient-Centric Care in the Century of Biology
G5P’s managing partner, Doug Given, will be moderating a panel, “The Promise and Perils of Precision Medicine,” at the upcoming Medical World Americas conference to spur discussion about the many challenges the healthcare industry faces in bringing real-world precision medicine to fruition. Here are a few of the topics Doug tends to discuss with the group beforehand:
- Collaboration at Scale: The NIH says precision medicine is a shift from a “one-size-fits-all” approach to a new form of customized care. But good medical practice has always been customized to the patient. So what this really means is that the convergence of new developments in science/tech and medicine will enable the health community to provide more precise care based on genetics and a holistic view of a person’s health, lifestyle, and environment. How can this be done effectively and at scale? The first hurdle to be cleared involves bridging the gap between the medical community and technology innovators, eliminating those distinct silos, educating physicians in advanced medical genetics, incorporating the physician’s perspective in development and innovation cycles, and cultivating active patient engagement. That’s no small task.
- The Financials: With skeptics noting that current federal funding models are insufficient to accomplish outlined goals, how can we achieve a more sustainable funding structure and market-sensible approach to the development of precision medicine? I believe it will happen through cross-industry and public-private collaborations to optimize market-ready solutions, movement toward valued-based healthcare measurements and reimbursement models, enhancing workflow for care providers, applying realistic time horizon expectations to allow change, and turning our attention to chronic disease care.
- Making Sense of the Data: How can we ensure that the massive amounts of clinically relevant information can be securely and productively translated to the singular physician-patient relationship? This question naturally ties to the need to develop decision-support tools that relay actionable, high-quality, and accessible information, at the point of care in time and place, as well as educational efforts for physicians. The choreography of current scientific depth and expertise is raising standards of living, accelerating longevity, and making overall positive contributions in human capital. We may never be a prophet in our own land, but the affirmative contributions into the planet’s human capital bank have our future looking good.
You can read more of Doug’s thoughts on precision medicine in his latest post on the Health2047 site here.