By: Ryan Ho

The Next Revolution in Healthcare

Imagine a world where you can know, with certainty, that the treatment for your disease has a close to 100% chance of recovery for yourself.

Now, snap back into reality and realize that it’s more real of a possibility than you think.

That is precision medicine, and it is transforming healthcare as you read this.

What Makes Precision Medicine Different?

In simple terms, precision medicine targets the most appropriate disease treatment and prevention methods for you by using information from your genes, lifestyle and functional biomarkers. This is in stark contrast to the traditional one-size-fits-all approach, where disease treatment and prevention methods are only chosen based on the standard of an average person, failing to take fully into account inherent individual differences.

To illustrate this, take two people with the same type 2 diabetes condition.

Following the one-size-fits-all approach, both would likely be presented with the same medication (for example, metformin), as that is the conventional treatment given. However, for one person the medication can be effective, but for the other it might not, and even more so, cause negative side effects. That creates the ongoing dilemma: How can two very different bodily reactions result from virtually the same treatment?

Conversely, precision medicine doesn’t work like that. With precision medicine, doctors would meticulously look at your individual characteristics such as your genes, lifestyle choices, and even at the details of how your body treats different sugar types! After that, they would utilize this information to precisely select a treatment method that fits you. Wouldn’t you rather obtain medication that is way more likely to work for your body, rather than just risking a guess?

TLDR: using precision medicine is like picking a suit tailored nicely to your proportions, instead of merely purchasing one off the rack in a closed package without a size number.

Why should Precision Medicine Matter to You? 

You get more effective and personalized treatments that actually work.

By accurately choosing treatments that suit you, precision medicine can highly increase the likelihood of successful outcomes. Essentially, before assigning an appropriate treatment to patients, their individual characteristics in the form of biomarkers are analyzed to highlight patients who would benefit from a specific medicine (responders), and the ones who would not, and potentially suffer from side effects (non-responders). An example of this can be seen in cancer treatment, where doctors can now analyze a tumor genetic profile to select the most fitting and effective therapy, increasing survival rates.

Additionally, precision medicine helps to minimize undesired, nasty side effects that traditional treatments cause because of their design for the “average patient” that does not work for everyone. Overall, patient quality of life improves because treatments tend to work more effectively when they are tailored to the individual.

Intuitively and conceptually, it makes sense. Precision medicine is like a GPS to find the best treatment course for you, using your unique “coordinates” (genes, functional and cell surface biomarkers etc.) As a result, the chosen treatment is more likely to point you in the right direction and less likely to bring you towards a detour. Same can’t be said if you just followed a one-size-fits-all, general direction though.

You save more time and money on your healthcare. 

Precision medicine targets the patient’s individual problem and directs you away from treatments that don’t work, helping you to avoid ineffective therapies and further complications, lowering your healthcare spending. It’s like when your car breaks down – you would only want the mechanic to fix what’s broken and not make unnecessary replacements to your other car parts.

For the healthcare systems, studies have indeed shown that it can cost about USD $1.1 billion less to develop precision cancer medicines as compared to non-precision cancer medicines. This highlights how precision medicine-driven drug development by pharmaceutical companies can contribute to making new treatments more affordable and accessible for patients overall.

In the long-term, precision medicine is more likely to cost less for new drug development, due to the increased clinical trial success rates, lesser costs allocated to treat side-effects or adverse reactions to medication. Commercially, precision medicine has potential for higher returns on investment (ROI) over time, and precision cancer medicines currently hold over 50% of the market share in annual sales.

You will be able to better predict and prevent diseases from happening to you. 

Precision medicine puts every patient at the forefront of healthcare innovation, so, if you’re a precision medicine patient, you’re not just benefitting yourself – you become a part of a growing bank of research and knowledge improving healthcare for everyone around you. You’re actively playing part in creating a healthier future for humanity by getting the best possible treatment for yourself, and at the same time helping doctors and other healthcare practitioners to gain invaluable insights that drive further medical breakthroughs.

Beyond just treatment options, precision medicine enhances the ability to predict and prevent diseases as well. As researchers understand and discover more about how individual differences impact the outcomes of treatments – they also understand the underlying causes of a disease better and learn to detect its onset earlier. This knowledge in turn opens the door to even more advanced medical treatments in the future. This is a healthcare revolution in the making!

Precision Medicine is Slowly Changing Lives

The era of the “one-size-fits-all” approach is losing ground, and precision medicine is already beginning to revolutionize healthcare day-by-day. We must move towards targeted treatments, few to no side effects, and quicker recovery times – by harnessing the power of individual functional, genetic and molecular profiles, lifestyle and physical environment information.

Why wait any further? The time to recognize the sheer value of precision medicine is now.

Reach out to us at Miphic, where we leverage our advanced technologies to better predict accurate and effective treatments. Partner with Miphic to truly take control of your health and to contribute to a future where healthcare is truly personalized and more effective for all.