Running head: IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

Is Personalized Medicine the Future of Healthcare?

Student’s Name

Instructor

Course

Date
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

Is Personalized Medicine the Future of Healthcare?

Currently, the majority of patients in the United States healthcare system are still treated

using the same similar patterns (Kaptein, 2018). For instance, the majority of patients with the

same condition, will be treated using the same exact treatment, and if they fail to show any

significant clinical improvement they are switched to the next similar type of treatment. This

classical treatments are often time-wasting and prone to errors (Meiliana et al., 2016). Special

characteristics of each patient are barely incorporated during patient care. This calls for

personalized medicine (Pritchard et al., 2017).

Personalized medicine is founded on the individual characteristics of every patient such

as their lifestyle, environment, physical characteristics, and genetics (Prainsack, 2017).

According to the Federal Drug Administration, personalized medicine aims at streamlining

clinical decision-making through differentiating in advance patients likely to benefit from a

particular treatment from the ones who would suffer adverse effects and incur costs without

gaining any benefit. This essay discusses the potential of personalized medicine towards

transforming the future of healthcare. It aims to draw a consensus that bridges distinct

viewpoints on the issue.

It’s estimated that any given prescription drugs sold in the market benefits only about half

of the people who use them (Kaptein, 2018). Personalized medicine which considers healthcare

needs of each patient as an individual has the potential to eliminate the limitations of traditional

healthcare systems by shifting the emphasis from clinical response towards prevention (Marcon

et al., 2018). Additionally, the evolvement of science has rapidly moved healthcare into

personalized medicine improving the accuracy of diagnoses and developing specialized

treatment plans (Barker, 2017).

2
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

Besides, personalized medicine can be used to identify patients who are at risk of

developing certain diseases, provide them with effective prevention plans and eliminate

unwarranted patient suffering (Meiliana et al., 2016). Effective prevention plans and reduction or

elimination of unnecessary patient suffering also benefits the community by reducing the

financial burden of illness and ineffective treatments on the healthcare system (Marcon et al.,

2018). Personalized medicine enables clinicians to identify the most effective treatment plan

before experimenting other methods, which fastens the recovery process and could potentially

improve life expectancy and the quality of life (Barker, 2017).

However, various scholars argues that personalized medicine could be detrimental in

some instances across healthcare systems. Disease pathogenesis particularly for the majority of

non-communicable diseases is remarkably complex (Meiliana et al., 2016). Multiple pieces of

research have shown that genetic associations in majority of the instances possess small sizes in

contrast with strong contribution of social and behavioral factors (Pritchard et al., 2017).

Besides, personalized health is majorly recommended for its effectiveness in identifying disease

predictors, which is useful in guiding interventions but it does not apply to all diseases. For some

diseases such as cancer personalized health may be beneficial but not useful for most of other

complex diseases (Marcon et al., 2018).

Personalized medicine also undermines the ethical issue of patient privacy. For example,

insurance companies may chose not to extend certain policies to individuals with genetic

predisposition (Pritchard et al., 2017). Identifying a life-changing disease, which lacks

management options in a patient is arguably unethical. Knowledge of these diseases in a patient

can result in unnecessary mental problems and adversely affect the patient’s quality of life.

3
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

Besides, if the findings are incorrect it can cause the patient unnecessary healthcare costs and

psychological problems (Meiliana et al., 2016).

Personalized medicine offers significant opportunities to transform the future of

healthcare. Currently, it’s most advanced in the management of cancer, however, it also offers

wider and exciting applications apart from oncology and late-stage disease such as in rare and

genetic diseases. It’s also promising in the treatment of COVID-19 (Marcon et al., 2018). Most

scholars argue that the integration of personalized medicine into the healthcare system is a

complex and challenging process. For it to be deemed successful healthcare providers need to be

equipped with digital tools that will be useful in understanding the complex information that

stems from the personalized medicine techniques (Meiliana et al., 2016).

On the other hand artificial intelligence platforms have emerged as important tools to

support the application of personalized data (Sotoudeh et al., 2019). However, these technologies

could also present challenges for clinicians (Marcon et al., 2018). Challenges such as lack of

information and training among primary care providers. There’s also growing interest in

commercial genetic testing among consumers, which has increasingly forced healthcare

providers to focus their clinical context on the patients’ test results (Pritchard et al., 2017).

Additionally, most healthcare providers lack an in-depth training in genetics or genomics.

The advancement of personalized medicine techniques requires the incorporation of genetics and

genomics into continuous professional development training programs or the curriculum by

healthcare educators (Marcon et al., 2018). The value of personalized medicine may lack the

potential of being extended to every individual (Meiliana et al., 2016). Previous studies have

demonstrated that certain populations are unlikely to benefit from personalized medicine

techniques since some treatment options may fail to work in these populations or because they

4
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

can be expensive. For personalized medicine to benefit every individual there’s need to solve the

current existing inequalities (Meiliana et al., 2016).

In conclusion, personalized medicine has an invaluable and huge potential to enhance

patient outcomes and transform the future of healthcare even though it is still young. However,

to realize the true value and capabilities of personalized medicine, healthcare systems should

overcome challenges with knowledge gaps, inequalities and infrastructure. Besides, many ethical

and legal issues present a challenge to the future of personalized medicine. But, there’s no

denying that it presents significant benefits to healthcare systems such as increasing effectiveness

and minimizing adverse events. Thus, it can be argued that generally, personalized medicine is

the future of healthcare.

5
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?

References

Barker, R. W. (2017). Is precision medicine the future of healthcare?

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/pme-2017-0060

Kaptein, M. C. (2018). Computational Personalization: Data science methods for personalized

health. Tilburg University. http://www.nth-iteration.com/wp-

content/uploads/2018/01/Kaptein-Inaugural.pdf

Marcon, A. R., Bieber, M., & Caulfield, T. (2018). Representing a “revolution”: how the popular

press has portrayed personalized medicine. Genetics in Medicine, 20(9), 950-956.

https://www.nature.com/articles/gim2017217

Meiliana, A., Dewi, N. M., & Wijaya, A. (2016). Personalized medicine: the future of health

care. The Indonesian Biomedical Journal, 8(3), 127-46.

https://www.inabj.org/index.php/ibj/article/view/271

Prainsack, B. (2017). Personalized medicine. New York University Press.

https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.18574/9781479838943/html

Pritchard, D. E., Moeckel, F., Villa, M. S., Housman, L. T., McCarty, C. A., & McLeod, H. L.

(2017). Strategies for integrating personalized medicine into healthcare practice.

Personalized medicine, 14(2), 141-152.

https://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/full/10.2217/pme-2016-0064

Sotoudeh, H., Shafaat, O., Bernstock, J. D., Brooks, M. D., Elsayed, G. A., Chen, J. A., ... &

Friedman, G. K. (2019). Artificial intelligence in the management of glioma: era of

personalized medicine. Frontiers in oncology, 9, 768.

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fonc.2019.00768/full

6
IS PERSONALIZED MEDICINE THE FUTURE OF HEALTHCARE?