Precision Medicine According to Christensen
Precision Medicine according to Christensen is basically a disruptive solution for healthcare, which means that provision of care for diseases whose causes are understood can precisely be diagnosed and can therefore be treated with predictably effective rules-based therapies. In this case, genomics play a major role. Collectively, Precision medicine is characterized by three fundamental features: the ability to detect casual factors, an understanding of what actually causes a disease and the ability to treat root causes of the diseases effectively (Carey 50).
Specific Technology-Based Enablers of Precision Medicine
Precisely, there are three Technological Enablers that are defined by Christensen that are brought about by innovation: from computers, photography, Intel chips and other mainstream applications. Christensen defines three technology based enablers on precision medicine:
- Advances in ICT – this includes broadband communication, Web 2.0 applications and wireless integrated Microsystems (WIMS).
- Advances in medical knowledge which entails more precise medical therapies and diagnostics.
- A disruptive value network
These technological based enablers transform technical problems from things requiring intuition, deep training and iteration resolve into problems that could be addressed in a rule-based, predictable way. In healthcare there are diagnostic abilities that are technical enablers of disruption. Technology enablers literally reduce the intellectual capital that is required in providing a value-add solution. They simplify the capacity to provide a solution which results in decreased cost of production by shifting delivery to agents that are less expensive (Willard 71).
Why Technology Based Enablers Can Enable Precision Medicine
Business model innovation was commonly used in the past in health care. The emergence of technological enablers for treatment and diagnosis of infectious diseases has seen most patient care transferred from the doctors to nurses. Disruptive innovation has brought the transformational force that has seemingly enhanced accessibility and affordability to various industries. Health care today screams for disruption and moreover, politicians have been consumed with the manner in which people afford health care.
Technological enablers build technological and commercial momentum upon foothold progressively displacing and improving the old expensive approach application by disease by disease or customer by customer. It has enhanced Precision medicine in quite a number of ways for instance; through Angioplasty the intervention care of coronary artery disease has been transformed making it much more convenient and affordable for many to receive effectual treatment. Arguably, technology based enablers in a big way free hospitals and physicians to focus their interests and energies on dealing with difficult medical issues as well as shifting problems from intuitive medicine with precision medicine along the spectrum.
The Benefit of Precision Medicine According to Christensen
Ultimately, Precision medicine will yield treatments that typically deliver treatment effects that are clinically significant with safety profiles that are favorable. Close to that, it will create a better selection of disease identification and targets of patient populations which will experience enhanced clinical outcomes. Another important aspect is that Precision Medicine will play a key role in selecting particular patients for treatment which will avoid adverse events that are drug related. The success of Precision Medicine is predictable particularly in the suitable selection of projects that in a big way benefit from its application thereby fulfilling these criteria:
- Evidence of downstream pharmacodynamic effects as the main consequences of target engagement.
- Strong data package of human biology with evidence that its modulation could likely produce a meaningful clinical effect and that drug target is a key driver of disease.
- Biomarkers prognostic of clinical benefit both for safety/toxicity and efficacy to allow associated diagnostic markers and population stratification if appropriate.
Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine is defined by Christensen as the concept of knowing what works, why it works and specifically whom it works for in applying the knowledge for patients. It basically entails delivering predictive, participatory and proactive treatment to patients unlike today’s status quo. Personalized medicine uses very refined and sophisticated diagnostic testing to get to the specific diagnosis that is aligned with the involved person’s genetic makeup at the molecular stage. It is therefore the ability to determine the unique molecular characteristics of an individual and diagnose an individual’s disease more finely using the genetic distinctions while selecting treatments that increase chances of reducing the chances of unfavorable reactions.
How Personalized Medicine Differs from Precision Medicine
Personalized medicine is the combination of emerging molecular information with established clinical parameters to create diagnostic, preventive and therapeutic solutions which are tailored individually to the requirements of each patient. Personalized approaches therefore facilitate healthcare delivery that is more precise based on the specific molecular data. Precision medicine on the other hand has the potential to seemingly deliver certain very significant changes on health care such as: treatment, improving diagnosis and patient prognosis. The emergence of precision medicine is imminent as it has the ability to drive deeper structural changes in the delivery of health care (Ginsburg 228). In addition to that, it improves the outcomes for patients. It has full potential to bring along significant efficiency savings thereby transforming health and saving money and lives of people.
Works Cited
Carey, Leeanne M. Stroke Rehabilitation: Insights from Neuroscience and Imaging. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Willard, Huntington F, and Geoffrey S. Ginsburg. Essentials of Genomic and Personalized Medicine. Amsterdam: Academic, 2010. Internet resource.
Ginsburg, Geoffrey S, and Huntington F. Willard. Genomic and Personalized Medicine. London: Elsevier/Academic Press, 2013. Internet resource.
