Personalized Medicine
Tomorrow’s medical practise will be different from yesterday’s.One of the main differentiating factor will be personalized medicine.
How will it change medicine today is a subjet of debate.
NASA first pioneered the concept of telehealth when sending across astronauts to space,today the applications of telehealth have trickled down to our everyday life as Personalized Medicine
With the advent of miniaturized devices and wireless communication, the way in which doctors care for patients has changed dramatically. The next decade will bring a new realm of precision and efficiency to the way information is transmitted and interpreted and thus the way medicine is practiced. Empowering clinicians to make decisions at the “point-of-care” has the potential to significantly impact health care delivery and to address the challenges of health disparities by providing diagnostic capabilities to communities with limited access to large healthcare facilities. The success of such a shift relies on the development of portable diagnostic and monitoring devices for near-patient testing that, when combined with suitable telehealth technologies, effectively empower clinicians or other providers to make decisions at the point-of-care. Results are immediate as samples do not have to be shipped off-site to a centralized laboratory. This is further complemented by their ability to carry out multiple assays such as blood gases, electrolytes, chemistries, coagulation, hematology, glucose, and cardiac markers simultaneously. The NIBIB has contributed to advances in this area by funding the development of sensor and microsystem technologies for point-of-care testing. These instruments combine multiple analytical functions into self-contained, portable devices that can be used by non-specialists to detect and diagnose disease, and can enable the selection of optimal therapies through patient screening and monitoring of a patient’s response to a chosen treatment. These technological advances limit the reliance on submission of samples to centralized laboratories, with results available within minutes as opposed to several hours or days, enabling clinicians to make decisions regarding treatment at a time when these decisions can have the greatest impact. In specific cases, sensors and microsystems can enable patient self-testing, and can contribute to the realization of personalized medicine by creating a link between the diagnosis of disease and the ability to tailor therapeutics to the individual.
