Free Essay

The Concept of Personalized Medicine

In:

Submitted By yepps21
Words 694
Pages 3
The Concept of Personalized Medicine

Yvette Stubberfield

Strayer University

SCI 115

November 16, 2010

Professor Genevieve P. Freeman

Personalized Medicine is a new revolutionary break through for doctors and scientists, seeking to treat patients as individuals, based on the actual biology of the disease and not as a member of a population to their symptoms. The whole concept of this new modernized medicine is to avoid wasting time with traditional medicine and risk patients dying before they got the right medicine.
The Concept of Personalized Medicine Personalized Medicine is a new revolutionary break through for doctors and scientists, seeking to treat patients as individuals, based on the actual biology of the disease and not as a member of a population to their symptoms. The whole concept of this new modernized medicine is to avoid wasting time with traditional medicine and risk patients dying before they got the right medicine. Scientists have been working on Pharmacogenetics project which is a study of how an individual inheritance variation in genes affect to the body response to a particular drug. Every human being is different and has a unique sequence of genetic information. Individuals respond to drugs differently based on their genes, proteins and environment factors such as: smoking, occupational exposures, alcohol and drug use, exercise and diseases. This study will help tailor drugs to fit our genes, (the right dose of the right drug at the right time) and preventive option for our individual health. The goal is to provide a mapping of our genes for your personal physician to customize a wellness program for each individual. For example, BRCA1/BRCA2, screening in women with a significant family history may help predict their risk for Breast or ovarian cancer. In Cambridge, a new industry is quietly taking shape that proposes to do that on a grand scale, as companies with names like Biogen, Genzyme, Gentics Institute and Millennium Pharmaceuticals-Zeus’ home – prepare to change forever the way doctors fight disease. They’re not alone: spurred by the prospect of scientific glory and enormous profit, big pharmaceutical firms and university and government labs have been joined by scores of new companies. It’s a virtual gold rush to mine the mountain of potentially valuable data the genome contains (Lemonick, 2001). The survey found that 50 percent of trials now collect DNA from participants to help find “biomarkers” that correlate with a drug’s effectiveness of safety issues. Some 30 percent of the companies said they now require all compounds in development to have a biomarker. The report notes that personalized medicine might be making drug development more complicated, not less. And while some companies are interest in biomarkers to help understand how a drug is working in the body, they are less enthusiastic about the establishment of required tests before a drug can be used. Still growing cost pressures on health care could make it inevitable that drugs will be used only for the patients most likely to benefit from them (Pollack, 2010). The advantage of Personalized Medicine is to target therapies: only give drugs to patients who will respond; only give to patients who will not have adverse side effects; it can also potentially rescue many useful drugs that that fail because of the adverse effect on a small population. This brings us the ethical issues as to should we be investing in Pharmacogenomic testing, when the public that are tested don’t understand, and their physicians may not understand, and make decisions that are ill-found. Also, the concerns about genetic privacy/discrimination by insurance companies, health care providers and employers, although Congress passed “The Law Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act to protect individuals against discrimination (in health insurance or employment) based on their genetic information. This law is to encourage Americans to take advantage of genetic testing as part of their medical care. However, this law does not pertain to life insurance. We have to educate our future doctors, insurance provider and employer that prevented health care benefits us all. References

Works Cited

Lemonick, M. D. (2001). Brave New Pharmacy. Time Magazine , 1-2.
Pollack, A. (2010). Drug Companies Pursue Personalized Medicine Approach. The Business of Health Care .

Similar Documents

Free Essay

Personalized Medicine

...Personalized Medicine Na’Tasha Slade SCI 115 Professor Palaniswamy August 5, 2012   Personalized Medicine has great influence on the way we think towards identifying and managing healthcare problems and diseases.   Personalize medicine aids in providing an in depth analysis of hereditary differences within genetically difference of people and also how it may affect the healthcare that they may need. With technology being modified daily the advancements in technology may improve the levels of personalize medicine by, giving details on someone metabolic, genetic, and proteinaceous profile that in the future be used to customize individual medical care. The concept of personalized medicine has broadened to include evaluation of your genetic risk of developing disease and determining how serious it may be as well as detecting diseases at much earlier stages—usually before you have symptoms. A personalized medicine approach will also tell you what medicines will work best for you, depending on many different factors, and reduce or eliminate the trial-and-error process of trying to find the right ones. A personalized medicine approach will better monitor disease and treatments and have a better chance of predicting outcomes of therapies and treatment approaches. Personalized medicine usually involves a combination of genetic testing (to determine propensity for certain diseases); suggestions for lifestyle changes; detection of diseases at the molecular level; and customized...

Words: 541 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Figurative vs Lititral

...REVOLUTION OF PERSONLIZED MEDICINE Shalika White Julie McCollum Intro to Bio SCI 115 November 8, 2011 Imagine receiving a call from your child’s doctor to inform you that your baby’s genetic test results are in and they reveal that he or she has the markers of cancer and or heart disease! These test won’t reveal when or if your child would develop cancer but the percentage is great that he or she will. The doctor then tells you that he would like to begin a series of test and care, all personally developed and tailored just for your child in hopes of preventing him from developing cancer and heart disease. Would you be willing to begin this prevention? Would you even want to know this information? Personalized medicine is the new revolution in medicine. “By offering the right treatment for the right individual, at the right time, personalized medicine can often prevent disease form developing, or reduce the severity of existing disease”. (www.dukepersonalizedmedicine.org) Scientist believe that if doctors were able to detect disease early on there would be less sickness, ultimately reducing medical cost and empowering overall health. Doctors will be able to work with each patient to promote health, wellness, patient education, disease prevention, detection and treatment. This particular strategy will differ from person to person and they would be able to understand individual risk factors. The benefits of personalized medicine would also include...

Words: 724 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Characteristics Of Personalized Medicine

...Personalized medicine Personalized medicine is defined as a medical model of customized healthcare in which the medical decisions, practices, and/or products are tailored for the individual patient. In this model, the diagnostic test is often used to select appropriate and optimal treatments based on the context of a patient’s genetic content, other molecular or cellular analysis. The application of genetic information has played an important role in certain aspects of personalized medicine such as pharmacogenomics, and the term was first invented in the genetic background although it has been broadened to encompass a variety of personalization measures [1]. Some use cases of personalized therapies, devices, or technologies that demonstrate...

Words: 2128 - Pages: 9

Premium Essay

Concierge Care

...Concierge Care Concierge Care In today’s healthcare climate, concierge medicine is gaining ground and increasing in popularity. Patients are opting to either pay in cash for services rendered or pre-pay a monthly or annual fee for more personalized services and 24/7 access to their physician. Both physicians and patients are driving much of the growth attributed to concierge medicine (Spooner, 2007). Many physicians are dissatisfied with their reimbursement contracts and heavy patient loads that limit the amount of time spent with their patients. Patients feel that the level of quality of care provided by traditional medicine is declining and are increasingly dissatisfied with impersonal care, long waits for appointments, short duration of appointments and the greater use of mid-level practitioners (Spooner, 2007). Despite the growing trend of concierge medicine, simply opening up an office will not guarantee success. There are many variables to be considered when deciding to form a concierge practice, including market competition, customer demand, ensuring value, continuity of care as well as financial, staff and ethical considerations. Competition exists in every industry and the concierge care industry is no different. Certainly, being the first concierge practice in the area to market more personalized services will be an advantage. The risk of losing existing patients looking for a higher level of service to other concierge practices in the vicinity...

Words: 1295 - Pages: 6

Premium Essay

Emerging Patient Driven Health Care Model

...mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Article Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models: An Examination of Health Social Networks, Consumer Personalized Medicine and Quantified Self-Tracking Melanie Swan * Research Associate, MS Futures Group, P.O. Box 61258, Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: m@melanieswan.com; Tel.: +1-415505-4426; Fax: +1-504-910-3803 Received: 9 January 2009 / Accepted: 2 February 2009 / Published: 5 February 2009 Abstract: A new class of patient-driven health care services is emerging to supplement and extend traditional health care delivery models and empower patient self-care. Patient-driven health care can be characterized as having an increased level of information flow, transparency, customization, collaboration and patient choice and responsibility-taking, as well as quantitative, predictive and preventive aspects. The potential exists to both improve traditional health care systems and expand the concept of health care though new services. This paper examines three categories of novel health services: health social networks, consumer personalized medicine and quantified self-tracking. Keywords: Patient-driven health care; health social networks; personalized medicine; quantified self-tracking; health care delivery; predictive health care; preventive health care; long-tail medicine; Internet; open source. 1. Introduction The life sciences field is advancing and changing in nearly every dimension, both content-wise...

Words: 14859 - Pages: 60

Premium Essay

Patient Centered Care Themes

...Most of the memorable stories that resonate with readers have a major central theme/s that directs the plot and ties in all the elements of fiction together such as characters, settings, and conflicts. Similarly, the central theme underlying my journey “To search for meaning through medicine” centers around patient centered care. Patient centered care involves respecting patient’s cultural values, preferences, and needs and ensuring that patient’s values guide all clinical decisions (Institute of Medicine). This idea of patient centered care is at the heart of my journey. It was this revelation that sparked my interest in medicine in the first place and it was this concept that urged me to apply to Mayo Clinic School of Medicine. The consciousness...

Words: 457 - Pages: 2

Premium Essay

Cultural Heritage Assessment

...differentiate one society or ethnic group from another”. Heritage assessment is an important step which helps the health care professionals to be client-centered and cross-culturally competent. Cultural/heritage assessment will help health care providers to know the traditional health care methods used to protect, maintain, and restore health and give more personalized care. Cultural competency will help health care provider to respect the underlying personal and cultural values of clients. Nurses will be able to give more culturally competent care when they identify and use cultural norms, values, and time patterns in their interpretation of assessment information (Andrews & Boyle, 2008). There are different assessment tools to collect information about different cultures which help the health care provider to become culturally competent. The greater number of positive responses shows the person’s identification with his/her traditional heritage. Heritage assessment tools also helps nurses to identify own beliefs and attitudes and how it influence in providing care. This will help nurses to avoid judging and help to give more personalized care depend on the cultural background of her clients. Each culture has its own values and beliefs which help in defining health and illness for the particular ethnic group and subgroups. When taking Indian culture there are number of traditions and cultures in each subgroup. The Hindu family who migrated to the United States has given positive answers...

Words: 1132 - Pages: 5

Free Essay

Health & Fitness

...BOUTIQUE GYMS (FITNESS STUDIO’S) A NEW TREND TO HEALTH AND FITNESS …. What use to be an environment with one simple concept to improve fitness and health has evolved to a fitness vibe. For starters, nutrition is the key to reaching and maintaining your individual weight loss and fitness goals. What once required a proper diet has now evolved into “nourishing “your body in order for it to function properly and to its upmost potential. In doing so, millions of Americans are making their way to the versa climber. A machine reincarnated from the 80’s for the heart pounding climbing classes. Speaking of what’s old is new again there’s the treadmill for running and to jumpstart the heart even more is a mini trampoline. Needless to say, to put a spin on things, there is Flywheel (indoor cycling); new technology which computes speed and resistance on flat screens in a nightclub scenario. Yet, the key to one’s success is personal training. What use to be a session with a trainer evolved to a partnership journey. In effort to staying or getting back into shape it becomes more of a group experience ( a community). To get the most out of any exercise regime, it is recommended having a set plan and educating yourself about proper workouts. Some of the new exercise trends are Kickboxing, Yoga, Crossfit, and Telemetry. Kickboxing is the best kept secret to getting a firm butt, a smaller waist, toned arms and a lean body. This can be accomplished...

Words: 627 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Entrepreneurial Opportunity

...Opportunity People spend hard-earned dollars for health care services and require answers to health care questions and issues that are confusing to many of them. Concierge care is an excellent business opportunity. There has been tremendous growth. Health Care Concierge provides a professional, discrete, and reliable resource for individuals. . Concierge Nursing Concierge care is a new avenue for nursing. Concierge nursing stems from the relatively new concept of concierge medicine involving physicians. Concierge medicine limits the number of sick people in a practice and doctors and the patients have contractual agreements for services. The services can include house calls, 24-hour access to the physician, same-day appointments, longer appointment times, free check-ups, and telephone and e-mail consultations. The opportunity for discussion at this time involves concierge nursing via the web. Internet access for health questions is the manner, by which a large majority of individuals seek answers. Concept Statement Imagine living in a world in which every person has access to his or her own personal health care professional 24-hours a day. Situations and circumstances arise constantly, in which, people would welcome advice and direction from a trusted resource. Solicitation for advice from a health care professional happens every day through friends, family, and even strangers. “HealthCare Concierge” addresses this overwhelming need. Benefits and Positioning ...

Words: 620 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

The Effects of Erp

... Over several decades systems evolved to systems focusing on providing tools for ad-hoc decision analysis to specific decision makers (DSS), and to systems designed to provide updated, often real-time, relevant information to senior and middle managers (EIS). These systems each contributed to individual and organizational improvements in varying degrees and continue to be important components of an organization’s information technology investment. An emerging line of systems targets professional and managerial activities by focusing on creating, gathering, organizing, and disseminating an organization’s "knowledge" as opposed to "information" or "data." These systems are referred to as Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). The concept of coding and transmitting knowledge in organizations is not new: training and employee development programs, organizational policies, routines, procedures, reports, and manuals have served this function for years. For example, the McDonald’s restaurant’s operating manual captures almost every aspect of the restaurant management including cooking, nutrition, hygiene, marketing, food production, and accounting. By capturing, codifying, and disseminating this knowledge, the company reduces the level of required know-how for its managers while improving the effectiveness and efficiency of its Communications of AIS . To define KMS, it is necessary first to define knowledge and knowledge management. Knowledge is a broad and abstract...

Words: 924 - Pages: 4

Premium Essay

Case Analysis of American Well

...AMERICAN WELL AMERICAN WELL ONLINE CARE AND ITS POTENTIAL  Communication : The Interaction between the Doctor and Patient can be immensely improved , where the patient can provide their feedback , acknowledgment and condition via email instead of scheduling new appointment  Choice of Doctors: The Patients can choose which doctors want to be seen there by giving them an option to pick doctors of their choice based on their experience and reviews  Second Opinion: The patient can take an immediate second opinion if in case of doubt. There by eliminating ones cynicism about their illness  Social Stigma: The concept of Social stigma is completely removed as customer can have privacy as he can book the appointment meet the doctor from the place of choice and ask questions which otherwise not possible in public  Appointment Delays: The Greatest advantage is the reduction of time in Appointment to doctor on an average it takes about 4 to 5 days. The online care this is drastically reduced to in minutes. There by reducing the pain of the patients and not waiting the illness to grow stronger.  Efficiency: Doctors can communicate with their patients via any electronic media there by reducing the appointments for second and third visit. In that time they can attend new patients there by utilizing their time efficiently  Globalization and Remote Healthcare: Health care can be given to remote and deserted places where regular hospitalization is not feasible. TEAM EDITION Team Edition...

Words: 718 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Communication and Technology

...confinement of the facility. The cover page held every detail in the life of the patient from the social security number to a doctor’s diagnosis to what industry that person had worked in for the largest part of his or her life. Now this information is just a click away. The nursing staff has possibly been one of the most affected by these programs, they are now able to see in print what and how the doctor had ordered any treatments or medications. The med technicians are able to point a mouse and order any medications that are needed for the patients at current time and not have to wait on the phone and make sure that the pharmacy is able to fill the prescription. It also allows for a more accurate medicine ordering method because if the chart does not have the information on the medicines, they cannot be ordered without having a new doctor’s order. Another special feature of the electronic charting method is when the insurance companies need to have some information on a patient, they can have access almost immediately, whereas in...

Words: 815 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Instructional Design

...the analysis process, the instructional design recommendations for the pediatric clerkship, the development of clerkship improvement project, and recommendations for current program modifications. Defining Our ID Process Outlines our process for this assignment/case study problem … Proposed Pediatric Clerkship Instructional Design Insert the team’s proposed design concept … in this section we should answer the first assignment question about helping faculty members overcoming their resistance to changing teaching methods. Pediatric Clerkship Education Development Team A will assist Dr. Kelsoe in reassuring reluctant faculty members at State Medical University of the benefits of integrating technology for computer-based training (CBT) will provide for the program. To ensure the faculty will capture the significance of a CBT program within their facility, the team presents an example of a successful medical facility that incorporates CBTs to support teaching their students and residents. The UCLA Center for International Medicine (CIM) is a non-profit organization based out of the UCLA School of Medicine. CBTs are proven to be a highly effective method for training a large number of medical students irrespective of training level or physical location. CIMs computer-based trainings are high-quality tools that combine authentic patient care digital videos, radiographic...

Words: 746 - Pages: 3

Premium Essay

Technologic

...people can travel faster and easier to other places by car, bus and air-plane, and see many new interesting things around the world. In addition, they communicate with people in different countries through the Internet and phones, which saves them lots of time and money.  But the most worthwhile benefit technology has brought to us is that it makes us healthier and happier. Clear progress in medicine, use new technologies to diagnose and combat diseases make therapy more effective. It allows us to cure serious diseases such as cancer and cardiopathy. Statistics show that life expectancy is getting longer. In Europe, for example, today life expectancy has climbed past 80 and people are glad to be alive; the longer they live in good health, the happier they feel they are. So, as we go forward into this ‘magical future’, will technology make the world a better place to live? Experts say it will! Benefits of Technology The term “Technology” is derived from the Greek word “Technologia” and “techne” means “craft” and “logia” means the “study of something”. Technology is a very broad concept and is used to refer to several braches of science and study. Some examples are information technology, medical...

Words: 1000 - Pages: 4

Free Essay

Wellness Industry

...entrant into the Gym market in the form of a low cost model - VIVA. The brief was to conduct a literature review on the wellness [gym] industry and then propose a marketing campaign for them to reach the target market, identified for them. Origins of Wellness Wellness principles and practices are in no way a modern development. Wellness has a long, ancient tradition and body of knowledge behind it. Traditions relating to health, healing, and the concept of wellness can be traced back to a number of ancient civilizations across the globe. Some of these include: Greek and Roman bathing, the Arabian use of medicinal plants and minerals, traditional Chinese medicine (commonly referred to as “TCM”), and Indian Ayurvedic practices. Numerous societies and cultures have developed their own interpretations of medicine, massage, psychological well-being, and other approaches to healing over the years, several of which have played a role in informing our current understanding and practice of wellness (Zimmer, 2010). As a modern concept, wellness has gained currency since the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, through the writings and leadership of a number of thinkers and physicians mostly from the United States, who have largely shaped the way we conceptualize and talk about wellness today (SRI International, 2010). Definition of Wellness There are a number of well-thought-out definitions of wellness, developed over time by the foremost intellectuals in the field. However, there is still...

Words: 1270 - Pages: 6