By using this site, you agree to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Accept
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
  • Health
    • Mental Health
    Health
    Healthcare organizations are operating on slimmer profit margins than ever. One report in August showed that they are even lower than the beginning of the…
    Show More
    Top News
    Stem Cell Therapy
    Key Benefits of Stem Cell Therapy in the Modern-Day Treatments
    September 6, 2022
    healthy diet plan
    5 Challenging Healthy Diets That Might Suit Your Lifestyle
    December 5, 2022
    triathlon training tips
    6 Triathlon Training Tips For Kickstarting A Lifelong Passion
    February 9, 2023
    Latest News
    Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
    July 20, 2025
    How Probate Planning Shapes the Future of Your Estate and Family Care
    July 17, 2025
    Beyond Nutrition: Everyday Foods That Support Whole-Body Health
    June 15, 2025
    The Wide-Ranging Benefits of Magnesium Supplements
    June 11, 2025
  • Policy and Law
    • Global Healthcare
    • Medical Ethics
    Policy and Law
    Get the latest updates about Insurance policies and Laws in the Healthcare industry for different geographical locations.
    Show More
    Top News
    Insurance Reimbursement is Key for Widespread Adoption of Focused Ultrasound
    June 20, 2011
    Population Health Management: Revolutionizing Health Care Service Delivery
    March 4, 2012
    Hospital Reporting of Surgical-Site Infection Rates
    August 11, 2011
    Latest News
    How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
    July 17, 2025
    How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
    July 17, 2025
    How communities and healthcare providers can address slip and fall injuries with legal awareness
    July 17, 2025
    Let Your Lawyer Handle the Work Before You Pay Medical Costs
    July 6, 2025
  • Medical Innovations
  • News
  • Wellness
  • Tech
Search
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Reading: The Rise of Precision Medicine: Viable, but Challenge Lies Ahead
Share
Notification Show More
Font ResizerAa
Health Works CollectiveHealth Works Collective
Font ResizerAa
Search
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
© 2023 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
Health Works Collective > Policy & Law > Health Reform > The Rise of Precision Medicine: Viable, but Challenge Lies Ahead
Health ReformMedical DevicesMobile HealthPolicy & LawPublic HealthTechnology

The Rise of Precision Medicine: Viable, but Challenge Lies Ahead

eborukhovich
eborukhovich
Share
7 Min Read
SHARE

In his State of the Union address in January 2015, President Obama announced the precision medicine initiative, a $215 million plan to collect genetic information from a million American volunteers, in order to further the development of personalized, genetics-based medical treatments. Now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved a blueprint for his Precision Medicine Initiative, and named an NIH insider as interim director of the project.

In his State of the Union address in January 2015, President Obama announced the precision medicine initiative, a $215 million plan to collect genetic information from a million American volunteers, in order to further the development of personalized, genetics-based medical treatments. Now the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has approved a blueprint for his Precision Medicine Initiative, and named an NIH insider as interim director of the project. The initiative aims at enrolling one million volunteers over the coming four years.

In a February 2015 audio interview with Dr. Francis Collins on what to expect from the initiative, the New England Journal of Medicine asked for a precise definition of what the term means. Collins, in his own words, defined it as an effort to capture all the specifics about an individual’s health, including, “environmental exposures, their own health behaviors, various aspects of their physiology [and] their metabolism, as well as genetic information, to a variety of different genomic tools and increasingly, the use of various cellphone-based monitors that can also keep track of lots of parameters of what is happening to that individual.”

Collins also talked about the origin and the aims of precision medicine initiatives. The “big hairy audacious goal,” as he calls it, is to work on maintaining wellness by identifying the kinds of inputs that will help people, as well as to do a better job in managing chronic disease and managing treatments of diseases that need it. The origin of the name “precision medicine” came from an Institute of Medicine panel in 2011 that was convinced that the term was better at capturing what Collins and his colleagues were trying to achieve. Collins, however, thinks the term is fairly interchangeable with “personalized medicine.”

More Read

David S. Muntz
Online Tech Exhibits HIPAA Hosting Solutions for mHealth
Zika Virus Legislation, Diagnosis, and Prevention: What You Need to Know
‘OK Glass, Start Patient Record’ Tech That Changes The Patient Dialog
2015 Trends for Rural Hospitals and Rural Healthcare
On Shoshin and Software Security

How Precision Medicine Became Feasible in 2015

Collins mentions in the interview with NEJM why 2015 is the right time for precision medicine to launch. His explanation includes the following four factors, which would all come together in time to make precision medicine feasible:

1. The emergence of electronic health records. “We do have electronic health records existing for a significant number of individuals, which wasn’t the case a few years ago,” Collins says. According to MCNC.org research, almost 78% of office-based physicians adopted some type of EHR system by 2013.

2. Patients want to feel more involved. “There are patients that are much more proactively interested in participating in research of personalized medicine,” Collins says, adding that this is especially true if they would get access to their own data.

3. Advances in mobile health. Collins describes the opportunities of mobile health (mHealth) and the ability to sample a lot of information using smartphone-based technologies. In addition, via the 21st Century Cures Act, there are possible changes in U.S. law happening that would allow healthcare stakeholders to implement precision medicine and adopt new principles on drug testing and get market approval for healthcare products.

4. A precipitous drop in the cost of genomic analysis. “The sequencing of a whole genome, which used to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, is now down to a couple of thousands [of dollars],” Collins says.

Decline in Costs to Sequence a Human Genome, Data available on http://www.genome.gov/images/content/costpergenome_apr2015.jpg

Video: President Obama on Precision Medicine (CBS News)

US President Obama: “The time is right to unleash a new wave of advances in this are of precision medicine”

What Are the Problems (and Solutions) Within Precision Medicine?

Cynthia Graber writes in the New Yorker that many doctors are simply not qualified to make sense of genetic tests, or to communicate the results accurately to their patients. What is the answer to such an interpretation problem? One solution may be to provide more training to doctors who use precision medicine in their practice. Additionally, it is likely that technology companies will be highly sought after in gathering and analyzing data.

James Timmons, professor of precision medicine at King’s College in London, say there is another problem, and maybe a much bigger one than the training of doctors. Timmons responded to the article by Graber via a comment he left on LinkedIn, saying the biggest problem, in his opinion, is the simplistic obsession with DNA. The issue would be the overselling of what DNA sequence data offers in the first place, and that DNA may be in conflict to what the approach via RNA (ribonucleic acid) already offers. (You can read more about the differences between RNA and DNA here.)

Following Timmons comment, do we need to reconsider how we make use of precision medicine? Tom Maniatis, director of the Columbia University Precision Medicine Initiative, says that it is important for the laymen public to understand that this is not going to happen overnight.

“We can now sequence very cheaply but we still have to add it on to the drugs developing, and that takes time,” he says in an interview with Time Magazine.

Whether better training of doctors or a more optimized use of DNA testing, the answer for how to overcome the challenges of precision medicine may well be that it simply will take more time to develop better processes.

Share This Article
Facebook Copy Link Print
Share

Stay Connected

1.5kFollowersLike
4.5kFollowersFollow
2.8kFollowersPin
136kSubscribersSubscribe

Latest News

botox certification
Help Improve People’s Skin Health Via Botox Certification
Skin Specialties
July 22, 2025
Telemedicine Apps
Why Custom Telemedicine Apps Outperform Off‑the‑Shelf Solutions
Health
July 20, 2025
Grounded Healing: A Natural Ally for Sustainable Healthcare Systems
How IT and Marketing Teams Can Collaborate to Protect Patient Trust
Global Healthcare Policy & Law
July 17, 2025
paramedics in surgical gloves and masks
How Health Choices and Legal Actions Intersect After an Injury
Health care
July 16, 2025

You Might also Like

ball-1106910_1280
DiagnosticsMedical DevicesPolicy & LawTechnology

Machine Learning: The Future for Health Plans

March 4, 2016

Top Ten Medical Innovations: Cleveland Clinic Summit Takeaway

October 18, 2011
BusinessMedical InnovationsTechnology

Healthcare Costs Involved in Finding the Right Recovery Program

December 13, 2016

TouchSurgery: A New Way to Relax Before a Procedure

April 10, 2013
Subscribe
Subscribe to our newsletter to get our newest articles instantly!
Follow US
© 2008-2025 HealthWorks Collective. All Rights Reserved.
  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Username or Email Address
Password

Lost your password?