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What Employers Should Know About Precision Medicine
Precision medicine, also known as personalized medicine, aims to customize medical care by considering the unique characteristics of each patient. The approach focuses on getting the right treatment to the patient at the right time and for the right price. At its core, precision medicine recognizes that individuals respond differently to diseases and treatments due to genetic, lifestyle and environmental factors. Key technologies driving this approach to medicine include genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, all of which enable healthcare professionals to analyze the intricate molecular details of an individual’s biology. The foundational idea is to harness this wealth of genetic information to predict, prevent and treat diseases in a manner that is specifically tailored to the patient.
The precision medicine market is growing rapidly, and more employers are paying attention to this approach. According to the Personalized Medicine Coalition, precision medicines account for more than one-quarter of the new therapeutics approved since 2015. While precision medicine is often linked to serious or hard-to-treat illnesses that represent a small fraction of an employer’s workforce, these conditions significantly drive up overall healthcare spending. Therefore, employers could use precision medicine approaches to align their health plans’ incentives and realize significant cost savings. Precision medicine represents a departure from the traditional one-size-fits-all model, potentially revolutionizing patient outcomes. Reach out for more employee benefits information.
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