Precision Medicine: Taking Healthcare from One-Size-Fits-All to Personalized Treatments

With the rising prevalence of chronic diseases, genetic disorders, and other medical conditions and the rapidly increasing population of geriatric people, the demand for advanced and personalized healthcare is growing sharply across the world. Precision medicine, or personalized medicine, as it is sometimes called, helps medical practitioners formulate unique and fully personalized disease management and treatment procedures.

As per the Precision Medicine Initiative, which was launched by former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2015, “Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.” This method allows researchers and doctors to accurately predict which prevention and treatment strategies will work for a specific disease, unlike the conventionally used treatments that are developed for the general public and have a one-size-fits-all approach.

This new approach revolves around the concept that a condition or disease, like heart disease or cancer, will not behave similarly in two different individuals. Instead, precision medicine believes that the behavior, symptoms, and impact of a disease and the efficiency and efficacy of medical treatments will be determined by the environment that the patient lives in, the genes they received from their parents, and the strength of their immune system.

With the increase in the public awareness about various diseases and their effects on the human body, it is becoming clearer with each passing year that medicine and healthcare cannot follow the one-size-fits-all principle. For instance, a medical treatment that eases arthritis symptoms in one person or helps reduce one’s tumor will not necessarily produce the same results in another person. Because of this factor, the popularity of precision medicine is growing rapidly across the world.

According to the estimates of P&S Intelligence, a market research company based in India, the value of the global precision medicine market will grow from $203.5 billion in 2019 to $738.8 billion by 2030. Furthermore, the market is predicted to advance at a CAGR of 12.1% between 2020 and 2030. 

Implementation of Favorable Government Policies Propelling Precision Medicine Popularity

The governments of many countries are rapidly enacting policies aimed at promoting the development of personalized treatment procedures. As per the Personalized Medicine Coalition, which is a national health council based in Washington D.C., U.S., the Donald Trump administration decided to reduce the prices of drugs in the U.S. in July 2019, for making them comparable with the international rates. This decision was mainly made for fueling the popularity of personalized treatments and making them affordable for the common folk.

Furthermore, as per the World Economic Forum, a Precision Medicine Initiative Grant was launched by Argentina in 2017 for developing scientific procedures needed for putting the investigational precision medicine methods to clinical use in the country. 

Boom in Medical Tourism Industry also Adding Wings to Precision Medicine

Besides the enactment of supportive government policies and regulations, the rapid expansion of the medical tourism industry is also fueling the demand for precision medicine around the world. This method is increasingly being adopted by various healthcare facilities and patients for treating cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and infectious diseases. It not only augments the number of medical treatment options but also prevents the occurrence of adverse drug reactions.

For example, the U.K. government is building three advanced therapy treatment centers in the country for making gene therapies and precision medicine available to the masses. Furthermore, the U.K. is rapidly becoming a healthcare and medical treatment hub for patients from all over the world. The country has already invested around $70 million in the Industry Strategy Challenge Fund for improving its healthcare infrastructure. 

…as Is Mushrooming Usage of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

The adoption of AI-based solutions is revolutionizing medical care and patient care all over the world. These solutions help medical practitioners monitor and record clinical data regularly, with fewer errors and greater ease. For example, an AI algorithm, called Deep Learning-Based Automatic Detection (DLAD), was developed by researchers working at the Seoul National University Hospital and College of Medicine in 2018 for examining chest radiographs and detecting abnormal cell growth, which, in turn, could help in detecting potential cancers.

Demand for Personalized Medical Care Set to Shoot Up in Coming Years

Diagnostics, personalized medical care, and therapeutics are the major types of precision medicine-based treatment procedures available throughout the world. Out of these, the demand for personalized medical care is predicted to surge sharply in the forthcoming years. This will be because of the implementation of favorable government policies regarding telemedicine and provision of government grants and funds in several countries for telemedicine research, burgeoning requirement for remote patient monitoring services, and mushrooming demand for quality healthcare, especially in the remote areas of the world.

Precision Medicine Usage across Regions

Across the globe, the adoption of precision-medicine-based treatments was found to be the highest in North America in the years gone by, and this trend is expected to continue in the upcoming years. This is credited to the growing prevalence of genetic diseases, surging population of geriatric people, soaring disposable income of people, and existence of several major precision-medicine-based treatment-providing organizations and facilities in the region.

In the future, the adoption of these treatments will increase rapidly in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. This will be because of the surging healthcare expenditure, increasing disposable income of people, rising rate of product approvals, ballooning public awareness about precision medicine, and existence of organizations developing AI-based technologies for precision medicine in the region.

Hence, it is safe to say that the demand for precision medicine will skyrocket across the world in the coming years because of the growing incidence of chronic diseases and increasing implementation of government policies aimed at promoting associated research in several countries.