We use cookies to keep our website secure, personalize your experience and for web analytics purposes. Read our Privacy Policy to learn more. By clicking Accept, you agree to our use of cookies.
With the dawn of artificial intelligence and data-driven analytics, it is hardly a surprise that all industries are moving towards personalization as the “one-size-fits-all” approach is no longer an option. Healthcare is no exception — recent research released by Abbott shows that 72% of patients want more personalized care specifically tailored to their unique clinical needs.
The term “personalized healthcare” first appeared back in the early 2000s, describing how technological advancements can help predict response to therapy, identify health risks, and monitor disease development. The Human Genome Project in 2003, one of the greatest scientific feats in history, marked the beginning of a “new era of the genome”, underpinning the shift towards patient-centered personalized care.
Lately the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on health systems across the globe, accelerating the urgency of personalized approach and importance of patient engagement in improving population health management and reducing unnecessary healthcare costs.
Personalized healthcare, also called personalized medicine or precision medicine, is a new frontier that explores the potential of data-driven predictions and deep patient engagement in advancing collaborative, higher-value decision-making and facilitating better outcomes.
In essence, personalized healthcare combines a patient’s medical history with the advancements in genomics, big data analytics, diagnostic testing, population health, and social determinants to individualize care and provide a specific treatment plan. As such, personalized medicine holds much promise in driving drastic improvements across the entire healthcare continuum by improving the quality of care and enabling better preventing diseases.
Source: Forbes
Earlier, it was extremely difficult to get access to health data residing across disparate legacy databases and gain actionable insights due to the lack of proper analytics capabilities. However, technological advancements allow healthcare providers to collect data at scale and derive actionable meaning from it to support the drive towards better clinical decisions.
Medical and bioscience advancements like mass spectrometry and next-generation sequencing have contributed to the rise of omics — a novel area of study concerned with the analysis of complete genetic or molecular profiles of humans and other organisms. Omics is actually an umbrella term for disciplines ending in omics — genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, metagenomics, phenomics and transcriptomics. Multi-omics data plays a crucial role in understanding the biology of an individual and tailoring care strategies accordingly.
Growing by leaps and bounds, digital health technology applies digital innovations to the healthcare field in order to boost efficiency and drive better outcomes. This is an umbrella term that encompasses mHealth apps, telehealth solutions, wearables and connected sensors, as well as electronic health records (EHRs) and electronic medical records (EMRs).
Source: TechTarget
Medical research and clinical trials, imaging data and genome sequencing — modern healthcare is awash with data. Just one human genome sequence produces approximately 200 gigabytes of data. Researchers estimate that by 2025, between 100 million and 2 billion genomes could be sequenced, representing four to five orders of magnitude growth.
But raw data has limited value. Big data analytics is intended to help healthcare providers correlate these multiple sources of data into a coherent while sophisticated AI-powered algorithms provide accurate, data-driven predictions.
Just like in other industries, personalization in healthcare bridges the gap between healthcare institutions and patients, enabling greater efficiency across all interactions.
Specifically, from a patient’s perspective, personalized healthcare solutions promote the following opportunities:
In addition to reshaping every step of a patient’s journey, a shift to personalized healthcare provides insurers and care providers with the opportunity to expand and optimize their services while decreasing expenditures. Namely, the benefits include:
By 2030, the global personalized healthcare market is expected to reach $5.7 trillion, growing at a CAGR of 11.6%. If anything, these figures suggest that healthcare organizations need to start paying close attention and introducing personalized medicine solutions.
But the transition from one-size-fits-all approach to new personalized healthcare paradigm is not without hurdles. While some initiatives like patient empowerment as well education and awareness are straightforward and can be implemented in the nearest future, other strategies will require more planning, investments, and community-wide collaboration. For instance, to move forward with a personalized healthcare approach it is necessary to redesign how an individual’s information is collected and processed in a way that ensures compliance with patient privacy regulations while also supporting broader research and population health management purposes.
From telemedicine and wearable tech to 3D printing and genomic sequencing, the future of healthcare is being shaped right in front of our eyes. These advancements in health technology are driving a paradigm shift towards a more personalized approach that can manifest into tangible benefits like highly effective individualized treatment, healthcare costs reduction, early disease detection, and more.
Kanda brings to the table its multi-year expertise in delivering HIPAA-compliant healthcare solutions to help health systems, hospitals and healthcare professionals deliver high-quality care and drive better outcomes. And with hands-on experience in big data analytics, Kanda’s experts are ready to tackle the challenges of building data-driven solutions to prepare for the era of personalized healthcare.
Contact us to get your next healthcare project up and running.
