Personalized Medicine, the Next Frontier

December 10, 2008 · Filed Under policy issues · 4 Comments 

Nancy B. Finn is a journalist with an expertise in the implementation of digital communications in health care. This is her second guest post on e-patients.net:

When an individual patient visits his or her doctor with a problem, traditional clinical diagnosis is made and treatment is administered based on the patient’s symptoms, medical and family history and results of lab tests.

In the e-health world of the 21st century, personalized medicine, a new approach to treatment and analysis of patients’ health issues, promises to revolutionize that process. Personalized medicine looks not only at an individual’s symptoms, labs and medical history but at the individual’s unique clinical genetic and genomic markers to determine a treatment program. Because these factors differ for each human being, the disease they carry and how they will respond to treatment will differ as well. Taking this to another level, personalized medicine enables doctors to make accurate predictions and assumptions not only about an existing condition but to make predictions about a person’s potential to develop a disease. This will enable clinicians to treat patients proactively rather than reactively resulting in a better outcome. Read more

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Internet diagnoses: Trust them or toss them?

December 5, 2008 · Filed Under e-patient stories, pt/doc co-care, trends & principles · 5 Comments 

This guest post is an article written by Lisa Neal Gualtieri, published in her local paper. It’s an example of widening distribution of principles and practices documented in the e-patient white paper. I’m grateful to Lisa for sharing these true stories of patients taking matters into their own hands, sometimes in collaboration with their care providers, sometimes despite them. We’ll discuss viewpoints in the comments.–e-Patient Dave

If you were a patient of Dr. Gregory House, you’d be afraid to tell him you’d researched your symptoms on the Internet. House, the lead character on the Fox TV show, would unceremoniously toss his stethoscope at you and proclaim that you are now a doctor as he nonchalantly walked out of his office.

But in the world beyond the television screen, many physicians have come to recognize the value of their patients’ use of the Internet.

And, if you are like most people, you turn to the Internet for health. Eighty-four percent of adult Internet users in the U.S. go online for medical information, according to a 2007 Harris poll. Some of them, like Diana C., believe the Internet saved their life.
Read more

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