With every breakthrough and every patient success story, it becomes more and more clear that the future of medicine is personalized healthcare. Personalized medicine is the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient. Personalized medicine may be considered an extension of traditional approaches to understanding and treating disease. Personalized medicine has the potential to change the way we think about, identify and manage health problems. It is already having an exciting impact on both clinical research and patient care, and this impact will grow as our understanding and technologies improve.
Personalized health care (PHC) is an overarching framework for care that unifies predictive technologies with an engaged patient to coordinate care with the primary aim of promoting health and preventing disease. PHC focuses on patient-centred health care, personalized health planning (PHP), shared decision-making, and patient engagement. It seeks to remedy spending on chronic care by encouraging healthy behaviour and planning.
Personalized medicine is rapidly having an impact on how drugs are discovered and developed; how patients are diagnosed and treated and how healthcare delivery is changing its resources to maximize patient benefits.
To personalize care, medical professionals look at your entire health, not just whether or not you have a disease. This comprehensive evaluation of the entire person includes all of the areas of your life that impact your health, such as nutrition, personal relationships, stress, exercise, and your mind-body connection. It also means that your health care team works well together to address your health goals.
Here are examples of how many aspects of the healthcare experience can be personalized:
– Doctor on Demand Offers Personalized Telemedicine Care:
It can be expensive and time-consuming to visit a doctor’s office, but many online symptom checkers are impersonal and often inaccurate. It is a service that provides personalized live video doctor visits to assess symptoms diagnose conditions and write prescriptions. Patients can get personalized care that addresses their unique medical history while still having the convenience of staying at home.
– Medical Centre Meets Unique Needs with Concierge Service:
It helps patients with nonclinical needs, including things like delivering reading materials or securing hotel reservations for family members near the hospital. The free service meets each patient’s unique needs with personalized service and care that goes above and beyond.
– Use AI to Create Personalized Health Recommendations:
An interactive virtual assistant application helps to search medical literature covering more than 1,000 conditions. Patients can then chat about their symptoms or questions to get personalized, accurate responses. After identifying a patient’s potential condition, the bot can connect the user with the best doctors in their area. The personalized, data-driven care ensures all users get the help they need.
– DNA Testing to Highlight Genetic Health Risks:
People often wonder if they are predisposed to certain diseases like Celiac Disease or Parkinson’s. DNA testing helps to give customers a personalized report of their genetic makeup and potential health risks. All it takes is sending in a saliva sample to get personalized results. These reports aren’t official diagnoses, but they can help customers know what diseases run in their families and what other conditions like lactose intolerance or genetic weight could be tied to their DNA.
– Diabetes App Provides Personal Tracking and Recommendations:
The website makes it easy for patients to track their blood sugar and meals and uses up-to-date research to make personalized recommendations for diet, exercise, and diabetes management. The app uses each patient’s data to make accurate recommendations for better treatment.
– Electronic education for personalized care:
One of the main ways it makes this happen is by using an electronic education platform that keeps patient diagnoses, treatments, and notes in one place that patients and their families can easily access. Patients can also use the system to adjust the room temperature, request food, and ensure they have everything they need.
As the ecosystem of stakeholders works to advance personalized medicine, and collaborate with government regulators and policymakers, it is necessary to encourage widespread use of these new tools and technologies. The regulatory process must evolve in response to advances that are targeted to smaller patient populations based on genetic profiles, and policies and legislation must be enacted that provide incentives for innovative research and the adoption of new technologies. Together, progress in research, clinical care, and policies enabling personalized medicine have great potential to improve the quality of patient care and to help contain health care costs.
– Key Takeaway:
If continual medical advancement can be described as “standing on the shoulders of giants,” then personalized healthcare currently represents a stepladder for today’s tallest person alive.
