The idea that health care would be anything other than personal astounds this American. And yet we're now priding ourselves on finding a way to make treatment "personal." Like, duh! This is like saying ... no, this is saying that health care before before the 1970's may well have been light years better than it is now.
As machines recede into the background (see the latest policy governing the use of mammograms) we become more recognizable to our doctors.
A whirlwind of activity is under way to apply the findings of the $3 billion Human Genome Project to improve health care in the United States and around the world.
Six years after scientists finished decoding the human genome — the genetic instruction book for life — they're starting to take their new knowledge from the research laboratory to the doctor's office and the patient's bedside.
"We hope all this knowledge of the genome will lead to more kinds of therapies,'' said Francis Collins, who ran the federal government's Human Genome Project from 1993 to 2008.
Researchers are seeking ways to tailor treatments to individuals — they call it "personalized medicine" -- in order to improve patient outcomes and to lower costs in the overburdened U.S. health care system.
The goal is to deliver the right drug at the right time in the right dose to the right person, and eliminate treatments that don't work.
Already some of these personalized treatments are finding their way into practice,'' Collins told a recent seminar in Washington. "We want to optimize the way we practice medicine, diagnosis and risk prediction.'' ...McClatchy
That news bite constitutes a pretty blatant admission that we haven't exactly been doing it right for years, decades. Now let's see how much time my own doc will continue to spend on battling with his laptop's software while I'm sitting there, watching. He's apologetic, frustrated. I'm thinking I should be back in the UK.
