Why Medicine is Poised for a (Big) Change

In this series, professionals predict the ideas and trends that will shape 2016. 

As Niels Bohr famously said:

Prediction is difficult, especially about the future.

My forecasts from last year held up pretty well. Whew. See what you think (Next Year's Medical Innovation Is Already Here).

Here goes for what I think the Big Ideas of Medicine will be in 2016:

Precision Medicine       

On January 20, 2015, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative? (PMI) in his State of the Union address. Through advances in research, technology and policies that empower patients, the PMI will enable a new era of medicine in which researchers, providers, and patients work together to develop individualized care.

According to the National Institutes of Health, “Far too many diseases do not have a proven means of prevention or effective treatments. We must gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral influences on these diseases to make a difference for the millions of Americans who suffer from them. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. While some advances in precision medicine have been made, the practice is not currently in use for most diseases.”

This kind of integrative approach is very promising and while it will take time to mature and to see results, I am simply thrilled to watch it come to fruition (and to have decent funding).

Homeless Medical Information No More

While there is a growing number of inputs for patients’ medical records — actual clinical records from hospital stays and physician visits, quantified-self information (activity trackers, sleep trackers, dietary trackers, etc.), lab test results, imaging studies, specialist reporting, pharmacy and drug use, genetic information (e.g., 23andMe), and family medical history, to name just a few — there is no “repository” for such data. I heard Eric Topol call this “Homeless Medical Information.”

DaVincian Healthcare is one of the first, if not only, companies working to make a home for all of this formerly disparate information, and to potentially make sense of it in a practical way. Once this becomes a functional reality, aspects of true integrative care can help actualize the potential of Precision Medicine.  

There's an App for That — Actually 165,000  

A recent study looked at over 165,000 mobile health apps and found that “…nearly two-thirds are focused on general wellness issues like fitness, lifestyle and stress, and diet. The remainder is made up by apps focused on specific health conditions (9%), medication info and reminders (6%), and women’s health and pregnancy (7%). Mental health apps led among disease specific apps, followed by diabetes.”  It sounds like a lot, and it is, and Darwinian forces will certainly cull the herd, but the question will be what difference will that make in one’s health?

Quick Hits as to What's Coming Next

• Blood test for depression: OK, cool but why?
• 5 Million Complete Human Genomes Sequenced by 2020: If Craig says so, believe it.
• Crowd Science Will Accelerate Scientific Progress to the “Speed of the Internet”
• Embracing Biohacking
• Genomics Revolution: Evolution by Natural Selection to Evolution by Intelligent Direction

The Big Surprise?  

While obesity is a major health concern in the U.S. and many other developed countries due to all the additional problems it begets — orthopedic, cancers, diabetes, hypertension, cardiac, pulmonary, etc. — there is a growing awareness of people looking more seriously at what they eat, looking for the hidden sugars (aka high-fructose corn syrup), and simply not wanting to eat bad things.

Recent documentaries such as Forks over Knives, Cowspiracy, Fed UP, Hungry for Change, Food, Inc., Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead, and Vegucated all provide concerning perspectives on what we eat and how it affects our health, performance, and longevity. Podcasts such as Rich Roll’s and websites such as Thrive Forward all act to further educate and provide tools to consider. Heck, it was just announced that The Forest Green Rovers are the world’s first vegan football (soccer) club.

This growing awareness is especially critical in medicine and healthcare vis-à-vis the recently published findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association that “nearly 60 percent of Americans — the highest ever — are taking prescription drugs.” 

How to Keep Up

I’m a big fan of conferences. Here are my medical favorites, please add yours in the comments section, and I hope to see you there!

TEDMED: Created and run by one of my heroes, Richard Saul Wurman. The website notes: “A single session of TEDMED might include a Nobel Prize-winning researcher, a dance troupe, a health activist, a venture capitalist and a brilliant young medical student. Each is selected because they have an amazing story to share…and a different way of looking at the world.”

Exponential Medicine is an offshoot of Singularity University and “…is a unique and intensive cross-disciplinary 4-day program that brings together world-class faculty, innovators and organizations from across the biomedical and technology spectrum (from mobile health & 3D printing, to A.I., robotics, synthetic biology and beyond) to explore and leverage the convergence of fast moving technologies in the reinvention and future of health and medicine.”

SXSW’s SX Health & MedTech Expo: When you think SXSW you don’t usually think medicine and tech, but I can attest that from this year’s event, it was pretty awesome, as were some of the associated invitational dinners.

Stanford Medicine X: As a newbie this year I was impressed with such a patient-focused and involved conference. Small and intimate, and just a joy.

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 If you'd like to learn more or connect, please do at https://DrChrisStout.com. You can follow me on LinkedIn, or find my Tweets as well. And goodies and tools are available via https://ALifeInFull.org.

If you liked this article, you may also like:

Big Idea 2015: Next Year's Medical Innovation Is Already Here

Is This the Future of Medicine? (part 5)

Bringing Evidence into Practice, In a Big Way (Part 4)

Can Big Data Make Medicine Better? (Part 3)

Building Better Healthcare (Part 2)

Is Technology the Cure for Medicine’s Ills? (Part 1)

Access to Healthcare is a US Problem, Too

Disclosures and Fine-print