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Entrepreneurs should focus on evidence to create businesses that provide personalized medicine
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NEWPORT BEACH, California — Panelists at the OCTANe Medical Technology Innovation Forum discussed what entrepreneurs need to focus on when they develop a new business that looks to provide personalized medicine to patients.
“Pay attention to fact the health care industry — 97% of it — is disease-based care,” Shaista Malik, MD, PhD, MPH, associate vice chancellor of integrative health and executive director at the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, said during the panel discussion. “The promise of personalized medicine is to flip that and to really focus on wellness instead of illness. There’s an opportunity to engage someone in childhood and adolescence and carry that person through their entire life span. You can engage the end- user and pay attention to what the end-user is asking for.”
Malik said she believes personalized medicine includes integrative health, which is self-care; conventional care and complementary care under one roof. It is whole person health that emphasizes well-being, not just wellness, she said.
“We are in this new era of being able to take the best diagnostics, whether is biomarkers [or] image markers, and figuring out the better care for the person in front of us,” she said. “We have the umbrella of guidelines that really speak to population health but a lot of times translating that at the individual level, you can do that with technology now.”
Steve n Keiles, senior director of genomic services and advanced diagnostics at Quest Diagnostics, said personalized medicine is today’s medicine. Diagnostic testing is used to pinpoint disease which will dictate treatment. He said it is important to look at the role of diagnostic tests and their evidence.
“I would say as you develop your business and you go to potential customers, focus on the evidence. Focus on building a body of work that proves that what you are doing does work.” Keiles said. He said it is important to develop a reputation of service and reliability.
“There’s going to be problem and there [are] going to be mistakes. You have to be able to retain your clients.”
Annette Walker, president of City of Hope, a cancer institute, said an important aspect of personalized medicine is the whole person, which includes the body, mind and spirit — not just the science.
“This kind of science is going to allow us to identify risk factors earlier ... ” Walker said. “We are going to be able to predict, prevent and treat in a way that we have never been able to do before.” – by Monica Jaramillo
Reference:
Keiles S, Walker A, Malik S. Future of health care- The role of personalized medicine? Presented at: OCTANe Medical Technology Innovation Forum; Oct. 28-29, 2019; Newport Beach, California.
Disclosures: The authors report no relevant financial disclosures.