Precision Medicine: Tailoring Treatment to Individuals
by Oakley Beard
Precision medicine, also personal or individualized medicine, is a complex which is based on the utilization of an individual’s multi-faceted molecular information regarding his or her genomics, environment, and details about life style for making decisions about the medical treatments of the patient.
The concept of precision medicine can be seen as a long-standing approach that aims at diagnosing and treating diseases at a more precise level.
While precision medicine is sometimes labeled as the next evolution of personalized medicine, the former emphasizes the fact that due to the genetic variability, each person is unique and should be treated as such in the framework of their healthcare policy.
Precision medicine and the concepts can and does hold the promise of improving objective measures of health and health care in numerous areas and in various measures such as incorporation of genomic and molecular data into clinical practice, predictability of the best treatment course, as well as understanding diseases themselves.
The possible advantages of precision medicine include the following: alleviating potential repulsion, eradicating them out of ethnic inclinations in consideration of negative reactions, identifying the most effective drugs for specific treatments, and also judging prospective dangers of contracting particular diseases.
In precision medicine, cancer treatment is gradually feeling the impact and benefits of precision medicine for personalized medicine like the targeted therapies that are developed based on molecular or genetic characteristics of the cancer.
But precision medicine has also several limitations which include higher costs of the enabling tools like DNA sequencing; The need to have increased knowledge amongst the Healthcare providers in molecular genetics and Genomics; Multiple legal and ethical questions concerning the patient’s privacy and security of data.
To overcome these challenges, efforts such as the NIH’s “All of Us” program are aimed at creating conscious diverse participation pool and advancing the adoption of precision medicine.
References:
Precision Medicine. (n.d.). Genome.gov. https://www.genome.gov/genetics-glossary/Precision-Medicine
What are some potential benefits of precision medicine and the Precision Medicine Initiative?: MedlinePlus Genetics. (n.d.). https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/precisionmedicine/potentialbenefits/
Genomind, Genomind, & Genomind. (2022, November 30). Benefits of Precision Medicine and How It Can Help Keep You Healthy. Genomind — the Science Behind Better. https://genomind.com/patients/precision-medicine-benefits/
What are some of the challenges facing precision medicine and the Precision Medicine Initiative?: MedlinePlus Genetics. (n.d.). https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/precisionmedicine/challenges/
