How can we put patients at the centre of the personalized healthcare business model?

Personalized healthcare is great healthcare - drug combinations targeting the specific features that make cancer cells what they are.?

The extraordinary innovation in targeted cancer medicines is delivering real-world outcomes.?

But is all as it seems? Just how patient focused is the current personalized healthcare model? Just how many patients get the best evidence based medical care?

Alongside my consulting work, I still work as a doctor, so I took the time to ask some patients what personalized healthcare means to them, and the results were interesting.

As might be expected, most patients had pretty good general awareness of the medicines that could target their cancer, but once you drilled down, patients really struggled to navigate the complex and ever changing treatment guidelines, especially when you consider that they rely on ‘Dr Google’ and have never even held a copy of the cancer treatment guidelines which stretch to hundreds of pages.

Many patients also described the emotional price of watching time tick away organizing all the appointments and tests required just to begin treatment.

The myriad permutations and combinations of tumor size, node status, histology and biomarker status are making it almost impossible for most patients to follow and understand their treatment options, especially after first line options had been exhausted. Even with the best intentions - clinical events such as low blood counts or infections or poor anaesthetic risk - can rapidly knock patients off guideline adherent treatment.

One patient described it like buying a car but being asked what type of spark plugs, suspension and fuel injectors you want rather than paint color or air conditioning. To make if worse, each component is sold by a different company!

How can we improve patient access and experience of personalized healthcare??