Personalized Medicine

How personal is it ?

It differs from traditional medicine which has been referred to as a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

• More broadly, “personalized medicine” may be thought of as the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics, needs and preferences of a patient during all stages of care, including prevention, diagnosis, treatment and follow-up.

Personalized medicine is a rather recent field of healthcare that tries to take into consideration each patient's unique situation — clinical data, genetic factors and environmental information — when formulating a treatment plan.

♦ The theory is, the nature of a particular disease is as individual as the person who has the disease. That means for every person the onset of a disease, its course and how it might respond to treatment is as individual as the person.

♦ The goal of personalized medicine is to distinguish in advance those patients most likely to benefit from a given treatment from those who will not benefit or who may suffer side effects.

Considerable attention is currently being paid to the use of genetic tests to guide therapeutic decisions; including the identification of genetic variations that could influence individual cancer susceptibility and therapeutic drug efficacy.

♦ Personalized medicine generally involves the use of two or more medical products, such as a diagnostic test to determine whether a patient may or may not benefit from a particular therapeutic intervention, and the therapeutic product itself.

A therapeutic product is a term for products that are intended to be used in or on humans for a therapeutic (healing) purpose. A heart stent or specialized drugs are examples of products.

• In the long run, personalized medicine seeks to reduce the burden of disease by targeting prevention and treatment more effectively.

With the help of personalized medicine, the health care management model will focus on prevention, moving from illness to wellness, and from treating disease to maintaining health.

♦ Unfortunately, the term "personalized medicine" is being monetized by many physicians to try to sell patients on the need to join their membership programs.

The patient pays a fee, $250 per month or more, to receive personalized services such as more time with the doctor and appointments on short notice.

Don't want to join the program, most of the time you can still see the physician assistant but not the main doctor. That costs a premium.