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

Jackie Connor
September 26th, 2016

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.

Sources:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/precision-medicine

https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2016/02/25/precision-medicine-health-care-tailored-you

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-future-of-medicine-is-in-your-smartphone-1420828632#livefyre-comment

http://www.mediaite.com/online/president-obamas-2015-state-of-the-union-address-full-transcript/

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Author

Jackie Connor

Communications Associate

Jackie Connor is Communications/Public Relations Associate at Ambry Genetics in sunny Southern California. Previously, Jackie worked as Marketing Director at a small synthetic grass company in Anaheim. She also spent more than a decade as a freelance writer/reporter for multiple print and online publications where she covered a wide array of local and national news and events. When she is not writing, she can be found surfing her favorite breaks along the California coast, biking and hiking the trails and supporting local beach cleanup events across Orange County.

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