A New Era of Clinical Medicine
Whether you’re attending a digital health conference or scrolling through wellness influencers’ posts on Instagram, it’s hard to miss the concept of “precision medicine.” Touted by the media and healthcare industry as the new era of clinical medicine, precision medicine is defined as the “emerging approach to disease treatment and prevention that considers individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle.” It sounds pretty awesome!
But something about this concept has been bothering me, and I finally figured out why: Have clinicians not been practicing precision medicine all along? Shouldn’t we always consider at least a patient’s environment and lifestyle when treating them? The realization is: yes, we should. Unfortunately, the healthcare system has drifted away from this.
Have Doctors Always Practiced Precision Medicine?
When my grandparents were young, doctors would come right to their homes and knew them and their families well. While they didn’t have genetic tests, they understood family history, environmental exposures, and lifestyle intimately. This allowed them to tailor treatments to the individual—essentially practicing precision medicine.
However, as medicine moved out of homes and into hospitals and larger practices, it became clear that the healthcare industry needed standardized care. How did we know if Dr. Smith’s remedy was backed by science or if Dr. Jones’s special tincture wasn’t just snake oil? The problem was, we didn’t know. So, we developed protocols and standards of care, which allowed us to research various treatments and prove what worked while discarding what didn’t. This standardization made care more accessible, allowing people who previously couldn’t afford it to receive the same quality as those who could.
The Return to Patient-Focused Care
Somewhere along the way, many systems and practitioners began focusing solely on protocols, forgetting the person behind the disease. Over time, we stopped treating patients and started treating diseases. Now, there’s a renewed call for precision medicine. Many of you are building businesses and practices that focus on the patient experience and the whole person. You’re asking the right questions and returning to the “art” of medicine by exploring how to support and treat patients as individuals.
Precision medicine has come a long way with the advent of advanced technology, genetic testing, and big data analytics, which allow for even more specific treatments and individualized care. Precision medicine doesn’t just focus on lifestyle and environment; it now also taps into genetic and molecular information to identify the most effective interventions. Take cancer treatment, for example. Precision oncology uses genetic information about a patient’s tumor to guide decisions about the most effective treatment.
No longer is it just about standardized chemotherapy protocols; it’s about tailoring a unique treatment strategy based on that individual’s tumor biology, which can greatly improve outcomes. Similarly, in cardiology, precision medicine allows doctors to consider a person’s genetic makeup to predict their response to certain heart medications, improving treatment efficacy and reducing the likelihood of adverse effects.
Finding the Balance in Precision Medicine
I applaud this shift, but I also offer a word of caution: don’t let the pendulum swing too far. Standardized, protocol-based medicine is crucial for ensuring that we provide the best care while exploring new therapies and innovative treatments.
When I taught Advanced Cardiac Life Support, one of the key lessons was that you needed to know the algorithm and protocol well so that when you deviated from it, you knew exactly why. I encourage you to master your protocols. Understand the medicine you practice thoroughly so you don’t overlook proven basics while seeking new solutions. And if you venture beyond the boundaries of standardized, researched care, do so with full knowledge of why.
Welcome to the new era of precision medicine, where solid, research-backed clinical care meets a renewed focus on treating patients as complex, individual human beings. The integration of genetic, environmental, and lifestyle data into care plans represents a transformative shift in the healthcare landscape—one that has the potential to not only improve outcomes but also make care more patient-centered.
Godspeed – Dr. Chris Seitz, MD