Fundamentals about Precision Medicines

Precision medicine is a modern outlook in understanding health along with better options for treatment and prevent diseases. It is also referred to as personalized medicine. This treatment method is different from the standard method as it considers individual differences in patient’s genes, surrounding, and way of life, which increases its potential.

For most medical treatments, all the patients with a particular disease are treated with same drug as a universal approach. These treatments are designed for the standard average patient as a common approach. But it doesn’t work for all. It may be effective for some patients and some conditions however not for others. Precision medicine can be perfect solution for such type of cases. Additionally, it becomes most significant for identification of best treatment as it is empowered by genetics. Hence, it helps in identification of genetic cause of disease which not always known in standard treatment method.

An example can help in understanding it more precisely —

If some people are suffering from asthma problem, then their conditions differ on various aspects such as where they grow up, how old are they, or their surroundings, air they breathe, or if they live with pet, or they have carpets, etc. Due to these conditions each individual becomes unique and standard treatment may not work for all.

So, in precision medicine treatment, physicians use diagnostic tests to determine which medical treatments will work best for individual patients. Some therapeutic treatments can be used to apprehend molecular mechanism which are genetic that cause the disease or influence a patient’s response to certain treatments. Thus, by combining molecular data with a patient’s medical history, circumstances, healthcare providers can develop targeted prevention and treatment plans.

Precision medicines have some very potential advantages as —

1. Efficient care — As precision medicine uses individual specific factors that affects patients' health, the efficacy of the treatment increases keenly. Along with this health care providers can serve personalized treatment approach for each of the patient leading to boosting the recovery.
2. Precautionary care — Result of genetic assessment performed for precision medicine process can help to diagnose genetically caused disease, thus, preventing the disease knowing and understanding the risk. This can be a long-term treatment plan as it will cure the illness along with preventing further risks for the individual.
3. Population health — Evaluation of genetic configuration of population as a whole can help in determining source of specific disease and in developing its treatment. Genetic study of particular section of population can anticipate a probability of disease and early detection.
4. Understanding diseases — Genetic screening can help understand lesser-known diseases and can enhance the potential in understanding the fundamental mechanisms of the disease.

The advantages make precision medicine appears like an appealing investment, but it does have some disadvantages.

1. Requirement of infrastructure — Precision medicine has the ability to severely impact healthcare but in coupled with massive infrastructure and implementation of enormous time. For implementation of precision medicine many fundamental changes are required along with separate and secure system of data collection, storage, and sharing.
2. Data collection — To make precision medicine efficient large genetic data is required from diverse population. Storage of such large data can cause huge setback. Also, the patient should be aware of their family history to understand the disease. Like for treatment of cancer, it is necessary to determine unique therapies that can treat an individual’s cancer based on the certain genetic abnormalities of the tumor.
3. Legal problems — To increase the potency of precision medicine, massive genomic data is required from diverse population. But when large amount of data is collected, it creates legal issue of who owns the data. Also, the storage of such massive data produce privacy concerns. As a consequence, execution of the process creates significant resistance in further development.
4. High costs — Precision medicine needs a lot of collecting and storing data and to accomplish this, it requires immense investment in infrastructure. Also, massive investment is required for security infrastructure for protecting the data. This could prove to be a burden along with other expenses.

Besides theses disadvantages precision medicine comprise exceptional hopes. It employs new technologies and techniques to rectify and determine the sources of diseases to treat and prevent various diseases. The drawbacks can hinder but the promises it possesses are great, and healthcare providers, bioinformatics professionals along with government can develop a solution to overcome these disadvantages.

Precision medicine uses new technologies and techniques to sort and identify the sources for various illnesses to treat and prevent illness. It holds great hopes but is hampered by the many drawbacks. The promises it holds are too great for these drawbacks to hold it back for long, and collaboration of healthcare providers, government and IT professionals can help in development of solution for conquering the disadvantages.