Personalized Medicine & Emerging Technologies: Enabling the Next Generation of Healthcare

The FDA defines Personalized Medicine as  “… the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics,needs, and preferences of a patient during all stages of care, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up.”   These “characteristics, needs and preferences” of a patient are not easily obtained given the definition is typically at the scientific, biologic or genomic level but once physiological parameters are available to define a specific patient population, for example genetic markers for diabetes or cardiovascular disease, the ability to increase the effectiveness of drugs or products can be dramatically increased.   

Further, we are currently seeing an explosion of devices that are used for a multitude of scenarios, both inside and outside of healthcare that will have a dramatic impact on the quality and outcome of a patient.   Whether it’s a “Fitbit” wristband that is transmitting personal health metrics such as blood pressure and heart rate or a consumer gaming device like Xbox that is leveraging its virtual reality capabilities to help measure the coordination of multiple sclerosis patients, the ability of these devices to provide therapeutically relevant data, in real time, is unprecedented.    CNBC’s recent documentary “Rise of the Machines” highlights the tremendous impact that society is already seeing with the proliferation of devices across health sciences, industrial, automotive and
other industries while discussing the tremendous potential that lies ahead. 

In my previous blog Leveraging Technology to Improve Therapeutic Outcomes & Reduce the Cost of Care I discussed how devices are becoming an integral part of the current and future treatment protocols as life sciences manufacturers integrate devices into their treatment regimens in order to leverage real time data that empower the patient to take more ownership of their health while also allowing physicians and care providers to monitor a patient’s real time status.    The combination of these two emerging sciences continues to create tremendous synergies for patients as well as physicians, providers and payers as we continue to seek improved patient outcomes at the lowest cost of care.

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What do you think about the issues discussed here? Continue the conversation in the comments below and on Twitter @SAPlifesciences.