Individualizing medicine - a drastic change in the medical landscape

'I Ain't the Same' by the Alabama Shakes should be the new theme song for the revolution beginning in medicine. Personalized or Individualized medicine holds the promise of improving the efficiency and outcomes of healthcare. As technology improves, so too does our ability to collect detailed information about our bodies and lifestyles. The interpretation of all this data - especially genetic info - has slowed its implementation into the clinic, but gene sequencing is faster, cheaper, and more accurate than ever before, leading to its introduction into doctor's arsenals.

A good example of this is the recently announced collaboration between the Mayo Clinic and Silicon Valley Biosystems (SV Bio). Genetic data is too vast and complex for any one physician, and requires computer-assisted analysis to provide relevant results. This makes third party data interpretation crucial for doctors to use the genome-based testing tool to better understand a patient's disease(s) and ultimately lead to more efficient treatment(s) with increased efficacy and decreased cost. This brings up a whole other slew of issues such as patient-privacy, which is where oversight and policy come in. Hopefully politics can avert common partisanship and instead promote the development of this society-benefiting technology.

Genome-based testing is just one example of the innovations ushering in the era of individualized medicine, an era with the potential to prevent diseases before they occur and to tailor therapies optimized for each patient's unique circumstance. Stay tuned for more exciting developments.