The new age of personalised healthcare
It is time for us to redesign the healthcare system around us as it helps us maintain our good state of health.
Sitting here at the Anne & Max coffee shop that recently opened up in bustling Strijp-S area of Eindhoven as the Dutch Design Week (DDW) is underway.
Even though DDW doesn't really seem like my thing, mainly as it tends to be more on the conceptual side of things than more practical and tangeble, it does invoke the feeling of rethinking aspects around design.
A meaningful and tangible definition of design that I found, is via Wikipedia (no surprises there, donate to them if you can🐼):
"A design is the concept or proposal for an object, process, or system; that is or has been intentionally created by a thinking agent "
It is time for us to redesign the healthcare system around us as it helps us maintain our good health and longevity. So that it's personalised for each individual considering how unique and interesting each one of us really are.
For the sake of clarity let us define health as stated according to the World Health Organisation (WHO):
"Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
I think this WHO definition of health speaks volumes of what we must try to strive for, when it comes to our own health.
Traditional western medicine focuses mainly on treating the symptoms. Generic drugs are developed by pharmaceutical companies via large clinical trials based on large population based studies. I am by no means questioning the scientific rigour of these trials or the safety and effectiveness of these drugs. When shit hits the fan so to say and the body becomes sick, targeted medicine after a valid diagnosis is the way to go to ensure good recovery. However, in our healthcare system we lack the holistic approach to medicine where the diet and lifestyle examination is built into how we approach a healthy state of being and the recommendations provided henceforth. Shit does not need to hit the fan or at least not that often, so to say...
Dr Florence Comite, a physician-scientist specialised in precision medicine and health longevity in a podcast I recommend, confirms the above observation.
“It's almost a new style of family medicine. That process, unlike the way we practice in medicine, which is you present with some abnormality, and you then hope with your chief complaint to have somebody deal with it. So you narrow the scope, and you're just looking at whatever the symptoms are, right?” - Dr Florence Comite
The advent of health-tracking wearables, digital health solutions and AI has made it all the more easier to monitor one's state of health and thereby help us stay motivated to adopt a more preventative and holistic view of our health.
Like the old saying goes, prevention is better than cure. Using these new tools that are becoming more and more inexpensive nowadays, we can start to build our own personalised clinical trial (so to say) to try to understand and manage our choices and actions that keep us in a good state of health and the triggers that dont.
They also say practice what you preach. So in this regard I have started my journey of monitoring my health and lifestyle more rigorously. I recently purchased the Apple Watch series 11 to track my movements, workouts and sleep quality. The Strava app also has a cool interface if you would like to share your workouts with others. I also log my nutritional intake via the MyFitnessPal app. I plan to also explore blood testing to explore other biomarkers as well as continuous glucose monitoring devices.
More on this, my journey and also potential downsides of the personalised care approach shall follow. So stay tuned :)
Disclaimer: This post should not be considered as medical advice. For that please consult your doctor or a certified health care professional. I am mainly here to elevate mine and hopefully your thinking on topics that matter to me. Having a PhD in biomedical engineering serves as a bonus :)