Medical Progress Review Conducted by Dr. Purnoor Kaur
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Personalized or precision medicine is rapidly becoming a crucial part of healthcare, revolutionizing the way diseases are diagnosed, treated, and prevented. This approach tailors prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individual patient characteristics, moving away from one-size-fits-all approaches.
In the early 20th century, Archibald Garrod began examining disorders that would eventually be known as inborn errors of metabolism. Today, we have made significant strides in this field, thanks to the integration of genomics, biomarker analysis, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and digital health technologies.
Key developments include the use of AI and machine learning to analyze massive datasets, predicting effective treatments and speeding up clinical studies. This technology is making personalized therapies more affordable and accessible. In psychiatric care, genetic, neuroimaging, and behavioral data are helping select more precise treatments, reducing trial-and-error prescribing and side effects. Genomic advances and AI-driven cancer therapies are personalizing drug selection and dosage, enhancing effectiveness and minimizing adverse effects.
The future prospects for personalized medicine are promising. By 2030, it is expected to become a cornerstone of healthcare, leading to improved patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency. Automation and robotics may further reduce production costs for individualized therapies, facilitating wider accessibility. The growth of specialty research hubs and smoother translation of innovation from research to clinical and industrial application are anticipated to accelerate progress.
However, challenges remain, including ethical, economic, and logistical issues such as data privacy, equitable access, and regulatory frameworks. Ongoing innovation and collaboration aim to address these issues.
Personalized medicine considers additional factors such as environmental exposures, developmental phenomena, epigenetic modifications, and behaviours in identifying the best strategy to treat an individual patient. It also plays a role in early detection strategies, using epidemiologic data and population surveys to make population thresholds, and significant changes from historical or average legacy values are seen as a sign of a change in health status, regardless of whether the new values exceed a population threshold.
Beyond medicine, technology is playing a crucial role in healthcare. The world's first telesurgery was performed in 2001, resulting in a successful two-hour laparoscopic gallbladder removal. Capsule cameras, also known as pill or swallowable cameras, are used in the diagnosis and monitoring of a wide range of digestive problems.
3D printing has expanded beyond prosthetics to include customized implants, surgical implements, and other surgical aids. These advancements are expected to continue, with healthcare in 2050 heavily relying on technology, with the use of electronic medical records, telemedicine, and other digital tools becoming more widespread.
The pursuit of health and well-being has existed since the beginning of time, and the current status of personalized medicine is that it is expanding beyond experimental and niche applications into mainstream healthcare, supported by AI, genomics, and digital tools, and is projected to transform disease management fundamentally in the coming decade.
[1] Personalized Medicine Coalition. (2020). The State of Personalized Medicine 2020. Retrieved from https://www.personalizedmedicinecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-State-of-Personalized-Medicine-2020-Report.pdf
[2] National Institutes of Health. (2020). Precision Medicine Initiative. Retrieved from https://www.nih.gov/research-training/precision-medicine-initiative
[3] World Economic Forum. (2019). The future of personalized medicine. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/the-future-of-personalized-medicine/
[4] McKinsey & Company. (2018). Personalized medicine: A transformative approach to healthcare. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/pharmaceuticals-and-medical-products/our-insights/personalized-medicine-a-transformative-approach-to-healthcare
Science is instrumental in the advancement of personalized medicine, with technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and digital health tools contributing significantly to the analysis of genomic data, predictive treatments, and affordable personalized therapies. Health and wellness, in this context, are deeply connected, as personalized medicine aims to improve patient outcomes and healthcare efficiency, thanks to technology's transformative role. Medical-conditions, especially complex ones, can be treated more effectively with precision, reducing trial-and-error prescribing and minimizing adverse effects. By 2030, we anticipate technology to be an integral part of healthcare, leading to seamless integration of electronic medical records, telemedicine, and other digital tools, thereby revolutionizing health and wellness management.
