Precision Medicine: What is it and what does it mean for you?

During his 2015 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative, a new research effort that will determine how we improve healthcare and ways to treat disease.

“I’m launching a new Precision Medicine Initiative to bring us closer to curing diseases like cancer and diabetes—and to give all of us access to the personalized information we need to keep ourselves and over families healthier,” said Obama.

Otherwise known as “The Ultimate Big Data Project,” the goals of Precision Medicine are to:

• Help patients gain access to their health information

• Consider each person’s distinctive details, such as genes, environment and lifestyle

• Bring new effective medical technologies to market faster

• Build a research network of 1 million or more U.S. volunteers

So what does this mean for your future healthcare?

Between smartphone apps that take blood pressure and automated telemedicine becoming more available, the future of medicine is becoming more accessible with multiple opportunities for anyone to gain a greater understanding of their personal health and medical treatments. Patients’ data will provide clinicians the ability to assess and determine  exact courses of treatment.

“If we’re born with a particular disease, or a particular genetic makeup that makes us more vulnerable to something, that’s not our destiny, that’s not our fate,’” said Obama in the 2015 New York Times article ‘U.S. to Collect Genetic Data to Hone Care’. “We can remake it. That’s who we are as Americans, and that’s the power of scientific discovery.”

Not only will prescription dosages be more specifically measured according to what works best for each particular person, but products and technology will also become more tailored towards specific diagnoses and courses of treatments.  

Patient information, which includes genes, environment and lifestyle, will essentially tailor the treatment plan.

As part of a tech-savvy generation, this initiative is meant to ultimately empower patients to take charge of your individual health.

Read the full article at http://blog.ambrygen.com/ambry/post/19/precision-medicine-what-is-it-and-what-does-it-mean-for-you