President Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative committed $215 million to using genomic data to personalize treatments for individuals. While considered a progressive step toward improved health, Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford (Calif.) University School of Medicine, suggests healthcare go one step further and use genomics to better tailor preventive health instead of treatments.
"Instead of a frantic race to cure disease after the fact, we can increasingly focus on preventing disease before it strikes," Dr. Minor writes in a contributed piece to Forbes. "At Stanford, we call this idea Precision Health, where we focus on helping individuals thrive based on all the factors that are unique to their lives, from their genetics to their environment."
Dr. Minor writes that precision health sits at the intersection of high tech and high touch. Clinicians and researchers have to start with data and use the data to guide breakthroughs, including genomic data to assess massive amounts of data for individual patients. However, clinicians also have to be in tune with another type of data — the informal, personal data coming from patients during examinations.
"We need to recognize that through the intimate bonds we form with our patients when we perform hands-on examinations and listen to their concerns with empathy, we enact a time-honored ritual and gain a different type of critical information than what we can garner from lab tests and radiological scans," Dr. Minor writes. "This kind of rich, nuanced data — what is important to our patients, what they fear, how their symptoms manifest and how they feel — must also factor into a truly holistic approach to healthcare."
Overall, Dr. Minor applauds President Obama's commitment to precision medicine, but he urges the healthcare industry to go further and focus on keeping people healthy instead of just treating diseases.
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