Читать книгу Discovering Precision Health - Lloyd Minor - Страница 20

I was determined to write this book to provide an overview of the Precision Health vision. But I also wanted to help reorient how health and medicine are viewed in the United States, and even throughout the world. While you’ll see that Stanford professors feature prominently, as do several companies operating near Stanford, the vision I’m putting forward is universally applicable. My inclusion of the companies is intended to provide an overview of the wide‐ranging approaches and technologies that have the goal of improving health and health care. This overview of commercial activity is not intended to be comprehensive, nor does the inclusion of a company in any way reflect an endorsement of its approach or likelihood of success [19].

Virtually any institution, or any individual, can embrace the tenets of Precision Health and begin working toward achieving better health outcomes. And all communities—regardless of income levels and ethnic, racial, or religious composition—can benefit from Precision Health. Indeed, while Silicon Valley is seen as a cradle of wealth, it’s also home to several jurisdictions where incomes are well below the national average, and where public health indicators paint a picture of distress. We are working in these communities with as much or more determination as we are in other communities with wealthier and healthier profiles.

To showcase the importance of Precision Health, chapter 1 is devoted to the state of health in the United States, as well as the health care delivery system. While there are gains to report on both fronts, it’s also clear that there’s considerable room for improvement and reform. In chapter 2, I address a fact that gets overlooked in most discussions of health: medical care plays only a small role in determining our health outcomes. Much more important are environmental, social, and behavioral factors, and I explore some of the reasons why they have been so difficult to address and why I believe components of Precision Health, such as the revolution in digital health, offer promising new hope.

Progress in medicine is enabled by pushing the bounds of conventional thinking in pursuit of a better way of treating diseases and other medical conditions. Chapter 3 features some of the innovations and disruptions—past, present, and hopefully future—found across health and medicine. I also describe the environments that are most likely to give rise to innovation.

In chapter 4, I focus on the importance of basic science and its role in discovery. As much as we know about the human body and how it functions, we get daily reminders that there is still much more to learn. Only by advancing our understanding will it be possible to develop the therapies that can improve health and well‐being. In this chapter I profile several trailblazers whose breakthroughs rest on a foundation of basic science.

The chapters that follow are dedicated to the three main pillars of Precision Health. In chapter 5, I discuss the many different ways in which it’s possible to preemptively identify deviations in health that may become debilitating, which makes it possible for individuals—acting alone and/or with health care professionals—to focus on interventions that will increase the likelihood of staying healthy. In chapter 6, I show how a range of tools—from smartphone technology to genome sequencing—are helping to avert illness and promote health and wellness. In chapter 7, I document a range of breakthroughs—particularly in the cancer field—that are being applied to help people recover from illness or disease. In the conclusion, I look at how health and medicine have evolved over the past century and how they may continue to evolve in the future.

For anyone with an interest in issues related to health and medicine, this is an exciting moment. We are learning more and more about what contributes to human health, and the different ways in which individuals can empower themselves to lead healthier lives. We are on the brink of an amazing transformation in the practice of medicine.

I hope this book will help you understand the dynamic future that lies ahead. I also hope it will inspire you to work with others—whether family, friends, or your broader community—to help ensure that the Precision Health vision can become a reality for people in the United States and throughout the world.