DUBAI: Life’s longevity depends on the “here and now” and stakeholders in the medical and healthcare fields as well as those in Information Communications Technology and the sciences must seize the vast opportunities available, according to a visiting Precision Medicine advocate.

Personalised Medicine Coalition (US) president Dr Edward Abrahams said, “Unfortunately, there are not many investors in diagnostics. I do regard the (capability) of diagnostics especially in the molecular level.

“Not enough companies are developing new diagnostics. Big data need to be accessible. We must allow data (to be known). We must not be ashamed of our illnesses.”

Abrahams said the necessity to invest in much newer technologically-advanced medical equipment and gadgets will eradicate trials and errors.

He wants to see more inventions in the areas of immunotherapy and gene therapy.

Abrahams and IBM-Zurich Area-Information Technology & Services senior scientist Emmanuel Delamarche were the panellists at the “Precision Medicine & Precision Wellness” segment of the recently-concluded two-day “Dubai Health Forum 2018.”

Abrahams said Precision Medicine is Personalised Medicine which is the “pharmacogenomics to treat by way of sophisticated tools and technology which are more précised in the analysis of (ailments).”

According to Delamarche, a technologist into life code, nanotechnology, electrical engineering and physics, Precision Medicine is the “holistic approach” to certain diseases taking into consideration the entire environment that results in the most appropriate and quickest cost-effective treatments.

He pushed for more discoveries and investments in the areas of neurodegenerative illnesses specifically multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s Disease.

Delamarche believes investments must also pour in for technological know-how for novel home care treatments so that hospitalisation expenditures dwindle.

For Abrahams, with therapies reaching exorbitant prices such that one may reach $1 million, he pointed out that with Precision Medicine and with the keen interest of stakeholders for investments to improved patient care, there would come a time when cost-effectiveness in healthcare would become a reality.

This is so since with the supposed continuing inventions of new diagnostics and medicines aligned with Precision Medicine, all other treatment modalities and drugs, proven to be lacking or nil in efficacy are going to be eliminated.

Abrahams believes that with the elimination of unworthy drugs and treatments global healthcare expenditures that also includes post-treatment care are definitely going to plummet.

He said governments, health/insurance and healthcare providers as well as all the other individuals must get their act together and move for policies, laws and structures to realise this.

Abrahams stressed that health/insurance providers must seriously consider the inclusion of Precision Medicine diagnostics and medicines in their packages.

Delamarche said: “One point of case in diagnostics is that a lot of treatments have a lot of side effects. We now have a (gadget, the size of a) ballpen which is used for blood tests (and the results) are available within 20 and 30 minutes.”

He saw the extreme need to improve the workflow by way of making necessary equipment available on hand so that patients with far serious conditions are the ones prioritised, in a hospital visit a week ago upon the invitation of a medical specialist who wanted him to take a look at the intensive care unit.

Abrahams noted that the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017 had approved 46 drugs, 30 per cent or 14 of which are for Personalised Medicine.