Comments on: Six Radical Visions for the Future of Health (including Self-Serve Pharma)

By: Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:45:26 +0000

Thanks Ian, very interesting.
Yes Gregory, the current system is very entrenched, but there’s still scope for exciting stuff to emerge :-)

By: vas 5054a

vas 5054a — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:05:13 +0000

I have found so many ways through which we can get the good results.Anyways keep it up and keep continue with your valuable thoughts.

By: Gregory Rader

Gregory Rader — Mon, 31 May 2010 19:06:28 +0000

Great article, particularly points five and six. Unfortunately, I fear too many people have a vested interest in the existing system for those issues to progress as quickly as they should.

By: Ian Taylor

Ian Taylor — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:31:36 +0000

Actually personalized medicine will likely bring down the costs of medicine. I have recently helped spin out a company (www.dynemobiosystems.com) that helps physicians and pharma predict if a patient will respond to therapy.
Every given year a large Pharma company will push 8-10 large phase III clinical trials each costing hundreds of millions of dollars. Unfortunately most of those trial’s fail. Some fail because the study population was too broad and thus not enough patients responded to meet FDA approval standard. The cost of those failed trials are rolled into the payment structure for drugs that did work.
Tools like the one we developed will allow Pharma to more effectively stratify patients and thus make more of those drugs successful. Less trial failures means the cost of effective treatments will be globally reduced.
Costs will also be down for insurers since instead of the current “best practices” trial and error, physicians will be able to predict if a patient will respond to therapy and thus avoid many lines of therapy that are ineffective and costly.

By: Ross Dawson

Ross Dawson — Sun, 30 May 2010 03:23:59 +0000

Thanks Tom, very interesting. Yes absolutely there will be many other indicators of what are the most effective medicines and dosages. If we get a lot more data (point 1 above) that will be a lot easier :-)

By: Tom Kuplic

Tom Kuplic — Fri, 28 May 2010 08:43:57 +0000

Ross-
Love this vision of the future of medicine. I think you are spot on with the idea of dosage targeted to a specific person’s genome. There will need to be adjustments for contextual (i.e. environmental) influences as well. I happen to work with Marshfield clinic in northern WI and they presently have the largest population-based biobank in US. Lots of great research on personalized medicine will be coming from that biobank and other ones in US. Thanks for keeping us focused on the future of medicine.
Best,
Tom
Marshfield Clinic biobank:https://pitch.pe/65198