The Personalization of Health Care

With genomics and other tools, it seems possible that we could one day see completely personalized health care.  Of course, the immediate reaction will be won’t this mess up risk pools.  [I am sure there is someone smarter than me that will figure out how to make that piece work.]

What I see is the following:

• Understanding personality types would allow patients to be matched to providers.
• Genetic testing would allow for better predictive models on what individuals with need in terms of coverage.
• Genetic testing will allow for the creation of personalized medicine.
• Better predictive models will allow for better care plans and preventative medicine.
• More transparency will allow people to make better decisions (e.g., calories displayed at restaurants).
• Ubiquitous technology will integrate health decision making into everyday processes and tools.
• Technology will allow companies to develop personalized, targeted communications that are based on patient preferences, historical responses, personality type, and experience to drive healthy behaviors.

Could we eventually get to the point where each of us had an adaptive plan that covered different things as we grew older and constantly optimized our care team or medical neighborhood based on our needs?

Of course, the risk comes when the models are wrong, but if you applied some of the chaos theory logic to a traditional modeling strategy and the current underwriting programs, who knows?

Not something for the next few years, but something I was noodling on the other day.