Individualized Care
Remember Atul Gawande’s prediction that medicine will become like engineering. Here is the opposite prediction:
Soon a person’s precise genetic data will be augmented by an extraordinary wealth of other digital data (provided by, say, the continuous monitoring of blood pressure, pulse and mood, and a variety of ultra-precise scans). The outcome will be nothing short of a new “science of individuality,” one that defines individuals “at a more granular and molecular level than ever imaginable.”
Full article by Abigail Zuger, M.D. on the genomics revolution in The New York Times.
Kinda cool……
……as long as no one is required to have their genes mapped out or to undergo “continuous health monitoring”.
One thing that comes to mind is the NFL monitoring players for concussions.
Could such scans be used to detect concussion symptoms? What might the limitations of this near-futuristic technology be, heathwise?
What? We can’t be like engineers?
Great! Maybe it won’t be necessary to understand all of the pesky human biology generating the data after all…
Fascinating! Can’t wait to hear more.
This is an interesting concept. But one thing about it bothers me: the lack of price competition in health care. In a competitive environment, this would allow for mass customization. But it a medical environment that is barely more than a cottage industry, it will further increase the price of health care. In health care anything that is labor intensive tends to be very expensive. There will be none of the efficiencies of scale found in, retail, for example.