Precision Medicine as a Paramount Modification in Healthcare

Medicine has always been an important sector for humans as it assists in providing a cure for every kind of illness. Over the past few decades, there has been a surge in the number of advancements within the field of medicine. The various technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things and virtual reality are in the works to be implemented into the healthcare stream. Today, humans also have a vast array of treatments and medicines available as well, to help them heal and live a healthier life. One among such treatments that is still in its testing stages is Precision Medicine. This aims at targeting very specific areas affected within the person’s body and ensuring a cure for the same. It also aims at eliminating the disease from the roots. Although it is yet to be brought into full scale production, it is touted to be a game changer for the field of medicine.

Formulation of a Pragmatic Concept

For as long as science exists, there is always room for new discoveries and more medical advancements as well. The fields of bioinformatics and scalable gene sequencing have shown tremendous progress with regard to how medicine can be individualized. For this concept to be a success, it will require a lot of patience and for the researchers, providers and patients to work in unison. It is also a wonderful kick start where the potential for components such as genomics and digital imaging, combined with brain power of a pathologist and the abilities of IT have created an ideal environment to work on this advancement. The human genome comes with its own complexities and cracking the code for each of the 7 billion plus people in the world maybe a challenge but nonetheless, the mapping technology of the same has brought forth a surge of development in the field of targeted therapies.

When an individual falls ill, they go to a doctor to find a proper diagnosis and an effective cure. So far, generalized medicine has been finding the cure for a majority of the population. This way, the person is suggested a common medicine that others also have given for the same condition. But, there are various factors that may not allow a person’s body to heal from the illness. It maybe an allergic reaction to the components of the medicine suggested along with the dosage.

Precision medicine on the other hand will attempt to prevent the sickness before the person can be affected by it. This also results in earlier diagnosis for the patients and hence helps in giving them the required treatments. This uses family history to track down if an individual is susceptible to catching a particular illness. It acts as a time –saver and thus allows for the time to be utilized in developing even more potent drugs while also cutting costs. Apart from creating effective drugs, doctors may also be able to use this technology to find a diet that is exclusive to one individual and also test out the bacterial content in the digestive system in order track down any harmful ones. They will also be able to have on the spot tracking of blood sugar levels and heartbeat to detect any irregularities. Traditional medicine usually sees everyone as an equal when it comes to illnesses but precision medicine digs deeper to find the root cause. This tailors it according to the requirements of the people and hence allows them the potential to think of ways maintain people’s health.

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How Telemedicine is reshaping the Medical cannabis industry?

In states like California and Nevada, where medical cannabis is legal, telehealth services have extended the boundaries of a physician’s medical practice for providing effective healthcare. It has bridged the gap between doctors that are available to prescribe cannabis and patients that are seeking medical cannabis treatment.

The Green Rush bought about a lot of change in the way society understood and used cannabis. Not to forget, it all started with research that validated the therapeutic benefits of the plant. Telemedicine has provided several benefits to both doctors and patients across the Golden State.

How it all started…

After the Californian Voters passed Proposition 215, medical marijuana gained its foothold into the healthcare industry. It was legal to recommend cannabis for patient-care. Since then, many states have passed their respective ballot measures establishing laws for medical marijuana recommendations.

Contrary to all these advancements, people using cannabis for medicinal purposes were still being judged by their friends, neighbors, and family members. They many patients felt they were perceived by criminals – the market place reflected that and rewarded dispensaries and clinics that valued discreteness. Privacy has always been an issue in the industry.

Then came the time for a change

Telehealth, in compliance with the Business and Professions Code (HIPAA), section 2290.5, allowed licensed medical professionals to recommend cannabis for medicinal purposes using Telemedicine technology.

Moreover, patients, who were feeling embarrassed to talk about medical cannabis to their primary physicians before, were now able to freely ask their doctors about medical cannabis therapeutic strategies.

Telehealth services turned out to be a solution to the conventional ‘physician house-call’.

How Telehealth Has Changed the Concept of Cannabis recommendations?

The technology which was earlier limited just for bigger healthcare operations has now entered the mainstream medical cannabis healthcare industry.

For some, this technology means exploring medical cannabis treatment of their respective medical conditions. While for others, it bypasses any judgments and criticism that may come from their primary healthcare provider.

Other than privacy, telemedicine services have a number of other benefits as well.

• It’s Easily Accessible

Not every city in the United States has access to 420 clinics and many patients who require it suffer from some form of physical ailment, often with transportation restrictions. With telemedicine, patients can now get a medical marijuana recommendation even if they don’t reside in an urban city. Not only this, they can avoid traveling long distances and instead just go online to see a specialist.

• Reduced Health Care Costs

With fewer hospital visits, telemedicine has tremendously reduced healthcare costs for millions of patients across the country. Patients save on fuel by not have to drive to their clinic. In addition to this, with a medical evaluation, they are exempt from paying several taxes when buying cannabis medicine.

Telemedicine continues to accelerate the growth of Cannabis industry

The ease and convenience of obtaining a cannabis recommendation have allowed patients to lean on telemedicine. The time spent driving through traffic to a clinic in person, sitting in waiting rooms, has now been replaced with just a few clicks.

It makes access to advice much faster and easier, enabling patients to ask questions more often and review symptoms that they would not otherwise deem worthy of an office visit. This also reduces the chances of any self-medication issues as patients can discuss strains and dosing directly from their doctors.

Telemedicine technology has also helped increase awareness about the potential therapeutic applications of medical cannabis. Service providers can now service an entire state compared to just a city. Patients with chronic medical symptoms now have proper access to medication that can manage their conditions without any side effects.

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Euthanasia – A Planned Full-stop

Somewhere in the world, an old man was on his death bed, doctors pumping life into him artificially. He wished to die peacefully in his own home, surrounded by his family, and not on some hospital bed. Placing this will in front of the doctor and his family members, he asked them to take him home when still alive and let him die at his own conditions. After all the arguments and looking at his irreversible medical condition, they had to comply with his wish and they arranged to take him home. Living at the mercy of a ventilator, he asked to be free of this life-support after he met all his family for the last time, dying happily surrounded by everyone that he loved. The old man chose what we today call Passive Euthanasia.

The word Euthanasia, widely known as mercy killing, has created a hustle enough to grab everybody’s attention today. Sometimes attached with sentiments, sometimes with controversies, and sometimes with ethics, it has divided the world population in two parts- those in favor of and those against. Coming from the Greek words- ‘Eu’ meaning good, and ‘Thanatosis’ meaning death, Euthanasia is basically a term for ‘Good Death’. It is a term used for what they call peaceful, dignified, easy, or gentle death.

Turning Back the Pages

In our history, we can find countless acts where hopelessly incurable patients were given easy death. Years ago, in Greece, patients with terminal illness suffering with a lot of pain were given a poisoned drink, in the form of a medicine, by the physicians in order to bring them an easy death. Also, in India, incurable patients were drowned in River Ganges, to release them from the life full of pain. These are the perfect examples of active euthanasia- an act to bring upon a deliberate and direct death to a patient. In ancient times passive euthanasia, correctly termed as orthothanasia, was also practiced. In this, the patients are allowed to die, by with-holding or withdrawing the treatment, rather than killing them directly. During the rise of Nazis, under a program to eliminate life unworthy of life, Hitler ordered the sick and disabled to be euthanized on large-scale, in 1939. Although all through the history most of the religions and philosophers deemed euthanasia as a sin or a crime, there were some who advocated the action, for good, bad, as well as horrendous reasons.

Forms of Euthanasia

There are various forms of Euthanasia- active and passive that we saw before, voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary, direct and indirect, and assisted suicide. Euthanizing a person on his/her own request is voluntary euthanasia. In non-voluntary euthanasia, a person is not in the condition to place the request or unable to make the choice, like a child or a mentally unfit patient, so someone on the behalf of them takes the decision. When the patient refuses to die and even then is euthanized, such a case falls under involuntary euthanasia and is mostly ruled as murder. In indirect euthanasia, a patient is given a treatment that has the side effect of speeding up the process of their death. This is usually done with the intention of reducing the pain and also called as palliative care today. As the motto is not to kill the patient but reduce the pain, it is accepted as euthanasia. In assisted suicide, a dying person who needs help to kill themselves is assisted in doing so to allow easy death.

Ethics around Euthanasia

The argument about the morality as well as the legality of mercy killing is age-old. It prevails even today and may exist always.

Most of the religions believe that the life is given to us by god and it is not ours to take. Moreover, euthanasia decreases our respect towards the sanctity of life, they argue. Although free to do our will, by taking someone’s life or helping in the act, we deny god’s right over our lives and hence euthanasia is morally unacceptable.

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The Changing Face of the Global Medical Ecosystem

Over the last few decades, the global healthcare industry is on a high by the unique confluence of innovative technologies and investments trends. Continuous technical breakthroughs, comprehensive medical research’s, new business models, along with the emerging players are changing the dynamics and are also shattering the traditional approaches at the same time. While escalating cost, fierce competition, increasing count of patients, new diseases are posing difficult questions, the same factors are the driving factors for today’s growth as well.

Out of the innumerable components, clinical trials, pharmaceutical innovations, and medical research stand to be the pillars for drafting the success story of the healthcare industry in today’s modern era. These life-saving vaccines, medicines and innovative solutions are the end-result of countless clinical trials, research work done by the physicians, and medical professionals. Insights provided and shared by these professionals have led to minimize or at least lessen the impact of life-threatening diseases at the global level. As scientists continue to explore the molecular world, the healthcare industry witnesses constant improvisations that help to fight and eradicate traditional diseases from the planet!

Virotherapy

One such breakthrough that has attracted the eyeballs of the medical fraternity is the on-going research work on ‘Virotherapy’. Termed as a major development to fight cancer, this is an evolving branch of medicine that could be a lethal/powerful weapon in fighting cancer. The foundation of Virotherapy was laid by a surgeon – Dr. William Coley, around a century ago. However, his ‘failed’ experiments were the preliminary steps that are on record and today’s progressive phase do carry the imprints of this previous works.

Through the advancements done in the field of genetic engineering, Virotherapy has seen the light of the day. In easy terms, this process involves a mutated virus that destroys the cancer cells without harming the healthy cells within the body.

Human Head Transplant

A decade earlier, talking about a face transplant would have been nothing short of a scene from a science fiction movie, however, today it’s a reality. Taking extensive inputs and stepping up the ladder, an Italian neurosurgeon – Sergio Canavero has claimed a 90% success rate that a patient can be treated and would be able to walk after a few months of post-surgery. However, even if it’s a success, the process would be too expensive and would be for the handful of the ‘richest’ people in the world!

As research work continues, Professor Canavero announced a successful experiment to reattach the head of a corpse to the body in November 2017. His next step will be to perform the experiment on a live, but a brain-dead person who has donated his body, only after which the first operation on a living person will be done. Interestingly, a 30- year old Russian suffering from a degenerative muscle condition – Valery Spiridonov has volunteered himself as the first living person on whom this experiment can be performed.

Artificial Pancreas

For a patient suffering from diabetes, this invention is nothing less than a God’s gift. As the pancreas of a patient suffering from diabetes produces lower quantities of insulin than usual, Medtronic’s MiniMed 670G is an innovative device that monitors blood glucose level and the insulin pump. This is approved by the US FDA (Food & Drug Administration). This device is immensely useful for the treatment of type 1 diabetes for the patients aged above fourteen years. Counted as the world’s first ‘hybrid closed-loop system’ it was released in March 2017 for commercial purposes.

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Innovations that Let You Wear your Health

“Changes call for innovation, and innovation leads to progress.” – Li Keqiang

Innovation is inevitable for an industry to flourish. In the Healthcare Industry, innovation is measured in terms design and development of devices, medicines, new and effective methods of treatment and breakthrough technologies that assist them. With the growing population comes the problem of new diseases, outbreaks, weak immune systems, drug-resistant strains of bacteria and viruses and much more complications. As such, the need for innovation in maintaining good health, monitoring health conditions, new yet cheap treatment methods cannot be disregarded. Moreover, these innovations need to give results that can be seen and interpreted in a jiffy.

Innovation for Good Health

With advancements in science and technology, innovation in healthcare has received a great boost. Using technologies like AI, Robotics, Analytics and more, healthcare is finding solutions to its problems. The year 2018 saw some great feats, innovations, and development. Many wearable and even ingestible devices were made for better health. Here are a few noteworthy ones which are likely to be made perfect in the upcoming year(s).

Electronic Skin, popularly known as E-skin, is a flexible, stretchable, self-healing, wearable skin-like device that can mimic human or animal skin functionalities. They combine information and communication technology with innovative hybrid material and micro-electronic sensors. The successful combination of flexible and stretchable mechanical properties with sensors and the ability to self-heal is aimed at creating a natural look-and-feel skin for prosthetic limbs and robots or humanoids and health monitoring. The year saw semi-conductors being embedded in the patch which could catch and transmit the vital stats of the wearer via micro-LED lights on it.

Medicinal Contact Lenses are perfect for those who are unable to manage their eye-drop routine and in cases where simple eye-drop administration is not enough to treat the condition. Researchers have come up with a new biodegradable polymer contact lens material that can ensure the proper amount of medicine to be delivered accurately for days and probably weeks. The breakthrough innovation suspends medicine in a layer made from PLGA (poly-lactic-co-glycolic acid), a biodegradable polymer. The amount of PLGA regulates the amount of medication that passes through it at any given time. The more the PLGA in relation to the medication, the slower it is released. Such lenses will be the perfect way to treat serious and chronic eye ailments like glaucoma, corneal scarring, corneal ulcers, chronic dry-eye, pediatric lenses and therapeutic or bandage lenses.

Needle-Free Injections are a boon to small kids and adults alike who can’t bear the sight of a needle. Over years the alternative to needles has been tried like patches with micro needles, nasal sprays, inhalers and more. But a needle shot is considered to be the most effective and sometimes the only way to deliver medicine to the body. But the issues are other too like sterilization, ensuring one-needle-one-patient, proper disposal after use, and proper training to those administering it. Researchers have come up with a device that can deliver medicines akin to the syringe-shot minus the needle. The device ejects a high-pressure stream of medicine which enters the bloodstream through the skin without piercing it the traditional way.

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Manage Diabetes with Aromatic Herbs, Juicy Fruits, and Refreshing Spices

Diabetes is a serious health problem, which is spreading very rapidly across the world. It is the collective end result of an unhealthy diet, improper sleep, lack of physical exercise, intense tension, and more. Some people also develop this worrisome metabolic disorder genetically.

According to the International Diabetes Federation (IDF), more than 425 million people are at present suffering from the disease across the world with most of them having Type 2 diabetes. Many researches also show that this disease will increase its human toll in the near future if necessary action is not taken on an immediate basis.

Although, drug therapy, exercises, and proper/balanced diet are assisting millions control their blood sugar levels, we have come up with some exclusive list of famous herbs, spices, and fruits that can also do wonders, as far as diabetic management is concerned. However, results of all such remedies can vary from person-to-person (based on different conditions) and one should not take it without the consultation of doctor.

Holy Basil

Ocimum tenuiflorum, popularly known as holy basil, tulasi or tulsi, is an aromatic plant in the family of Lamiaceae. Many studies have proved that regular intake of Basil can help a diabetic patient to control sugar levels. The reason is that the leaves of this plant are packed with antioxidants that produce eugenol, methyl eugenol, and caryophyllene, which assist pancreatic cells to function properly and thus, ultimately increase sensitivity to insulin. This process, at the end, helps the patients to regulate blood sugar levels. Moreover, the benefits of this holy plant do not stop only on controlling diabetes. Tulsi leaves are considered good for digestion, skin, and also help reduce oxidative stress in the body.

In a random trial conducted on few diabetic patients, it was found that consumption of 2g of tulsi leaves extract alone, or combined with neem leaves extract, resulted into lowering the diabetic symptoms. However, this study also revealed that tulsi or any other herbs/spices alone can’t lower the blood sugar levels and results can vary from person-to-person. But to achieve better results it would be great to consume it along with the drug therapy and consider tulsi leaves as an adjunct therapy, not as a regular therapy for diabetic management.

Bilberry

Bilberry- a popular fruit, native to Europe, is quite different than America’s blueberry. Their appearance might look similar from a distant range, but both of these fruits are completely different from each other. Bilberry is softer compared to blueberry and gives a sweet taste with a slight tart and acidic quality. Moreover, Bilberries are considered superior to Blueberries as it is blue throughout and this greater density of blue colour carries more anthocyanins—the wholesome antioxidants that fight diabetes. According to one prominent study, it is revealed that regular intake of fresh bilberries, approx. 400gms daily, can help patients to improve their metabolic disorder.

Few other studies also reflected that Bilberry leaves contain tannins, flavonoids, polyphenols, and a high concentration of chromium. These ingredients possess the quality to fight against diabetes. Although, it is only theoretically proven till date, and its adaptability is limited, but it is also a fact that its leaves contain special chemicals like glucokinin and neomirtilline, which can help controlling blood sugar. Moreover, some researchers suggest that flavonoids in Bilberry leaves can also help a patient in its fight against diabetic circulation disorder. Such researches are still in its early stage, but Bilberry surely holds a promise to lower blood sugar levels in a natural way. This tasty fruit and its leaves also assist patients in maintaining good eye health, heart health, and help reduce inflammation in human body.

Turmeric

This yellow coloured popular spice (also considered as a great herb by many) is not only famous for adding flavour to our dishes but also known for its vital properties that fight against diabetes and cancer disorders. Turmeric contains curcumin, which is the most beneficial component of this spice. It has an anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, antioxidant element that benefits a diabetic patient.

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