Challenges Associated with Precision Medicine Approach
Medical developments are on the verge of witnessing a revolution. With the use of advanced technology, healthcare experts are getting better options to provide treatment designed in a more precise manner for individual patients.
Advances in sequencing and molecular genomics technology are key factors driving the healthcare sector toward the adoption of precision and personalized medicine.
Let’s discuss how precision medicine works and how it can help to treat, manage, predict and prevent diseases.
Introduction to Precision Medicine
Precision medicine is defined as a developing approach for treating and preventing diseases by using information related to the lifestyle, living environments, and genes of individual patients.
Precision medicine allows researchers and doctors to predict and choose the medicine options accurately and plan which treatment option would go with which set of patients.
The use of precision medicine is used to treat and prevent several diseases such as cardiovascular, diabetes, neurology, cancer, and many other diseases. The presence of diseases can be completely different from one patient to another.
The health of the person is influenced by various factors such as genes and the living environment, which is different in each patient. Understanding these factors can help experts to know the disease’s reason and how well the chosen treatment option might work.
Market Overview of the Middle East Precision Medicine
The idea of the precision medicine approach is growing rapidly in the healthcare sector through several expansions in different technologies such as big data, bioinformatics, and next-generation sequencing.
Middle east precision medicine market is supposed to witness the massive growth in the coming years due to:
- Growing number of chronic diseases
- Decreasing reactions to the adverse drug via pharmacogenomics tests
- Increasing advancements in DNA sequencing technologies
- Reducing the cost of the overall healthcare system across the world
Also, the constant investments by several healthcare companies to meet the growing demand for precision medicine is among the key factors driving the growth of the overall market.
According to BIS Research report, the middle east precision market is expected to grow from a market value of $3,942.6 million in 2021 to $8,620.0 million by 2032, at a growth rate of 7.37% during the forecast period of 2022–2032.
Challenges of Precision Medicine
Precision medicine has some promising potential that can transform the way of treating and preventing diseases.
However, like other developing healthcare techniques, precision medicine initiative needs to cross several hurdles before becoming commercially and mainstream viable.
The following are the main challenges that precision medicine faces today.
- High Cost
The precision medicine approach involves high testing of the patients to study different biological markers present. The tests done are very expensive, which creates a lot of financial burden on people.
So even if patients know the importance of the test, it becomes challenging to opt for those tests due to the high costs.
Another area resulting in high costs for the healthcare sector is in managing and storing the collected medical data.
Also, using advanced technologies to get meaningful insights from the collected information is much more expensive.
Overall, the cost of getting personalized medicine is much higher compared to the traditional method, hence becoming an obstacle to the growth of precision medicine.
- Building Expertise
Precision medicine includes the building of different analytical models that are based on different biomarkers.
Therefore, as the demand for precision medicine initiative are increasing and people start accepting the approach as a regular part of health care, medical experts need to have a much better understanding of genetics and biochemistry to underhand the outcomes.
The doctors would need to keep themselves updated on technology and get the proper training to practice precision medicine techniques.
- Ethical and Legal Issues
Precision medicine needs patients to share personal medical information that is used by several companies. The data shared by the patients are always at risk of getting used in the wrong manner.
Due to such risk of data sharing, many patients feel sacred over sharing their medical data with healthcare companies and practitioners.
Precision Medicine Future
It’s quite clear that medicine does not work similarly for every individual.
For example, a treatment that can help to shrink the tumor for one patient may not work similarly for someone else.
The adoption of a precision medicine approach can allow healthcare experts to get better-detailed tests done on patients and know-how the disease is different from others and which treatment can be the best fit to cure it.
Precision medicine is all about matching the right medicine for the right people to get the right outcome.
Conclusion
There are several challenges that precision medicine needs to overcome before becoming a part of the common health checkup process globally. Nevertheless, precision medicine is a step toward knowing various groups of patients and helping them by providing quality medical care as per their individual needs.
