Is ‘personalised medicine’ the future of healthcare? – Tatler

With the emergence of genetic sequencing, advances in diagnostics and wearable devices, there has been a swell of excitement around precision medicine or customised healthcare. The story in itself has fuelled a billion dollar market for public consumption. However, the industry is outpacing the science, and as yet, it is not so straight forward.

I have compiled a list of some of the key areas and advances in personalised medicine, which we will see come in to focus over the next few years:

1. Hormones: Such as oestrogen, progesterone, testosterone and thyroid, to name but a few. As physicians, we have been fortunate enough to tailor the needs to the individual, depending on the patients blood results and their symptoms. Although this is not new, treatments can vary, based on conventional wisdom, body-identical, bio-identical and natural supplements. It can be difficult for patients to navigate, as some practitioners have become more like alchemists, trialing different treatments (by their very nature it is not always evidence-based). For more detail please read my articles on correcting hormonal imbalance.

2. Cancer risk and diagnosis: Home DNA genetic test-kits have made checking for inheritable diseases widely available, but with some controversy (I have elaborated on this in my other article). They have also discovered new techniques for identifying cancer cell DNA markers in the blood, also known as liquid biopsies. This could potentially pick up of over 50 early stage cancers. Current trials are underway in the US and UK, which could lead to a paradigm shift in early-cancer detection for individuals, the likes of which we have not seen for over 30 years. Using polygenic risk scores (different combinations of genetic variance for a particular disease), multiple data points can be stacked for each individual (i.e. demographics/family history etc) and offer greater diagnostic precision.

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Is 'personalised medicine' the future of healthcare? - Tatler