Dean Lloyd Minor, MD, calls for President Barack Obama to use next week's State of the Union to embrace precision health. He lays out his thoughts and Stanford's vision in a commentary published today on Forbes:
If the amazing scientific advances of recent years can help us more effectively treat disease based on individual factors, shouldn’t we also put them to work by helping us keep people from getting sick in the first place?
...Instead of a frantic race to cure disease after the fact, we can increasingly focus on preventing disease before it strikes. By focusing on health and wellness, we can also have a meaningful impact in reducing healthcare costs. 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.
Precision health marries the advances of data science, biotechnology and genetic analysis with the old-school passion for patients as people, people who can now partner with their physicians to manage, and maximize, their well-being. It aims higher, he says.
"Because when it comes to health, we must think as big as we can – not just about treating disease, but about making and keeping people healthy," Minor writes.
Previously: Lloyd Minor shares his vision for Stanford Medicine, talks about its "paradigm-shifting advances", How Stanford Medicine will "develop, define and lead the field of precision health" and A conversation on the promises and challenges of precision health
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