Researchers are pleading for a paradigm shift in medical practice!
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Predictive medicine means intervening before it is too late, before the first (and possibly irreversible) complaints appear (also known as preventive medicine or preventive care).
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A medical professional from the University of Bonn recently published a book on advances in research in this area. However promising the results may appear, they seldom make it into clinical diagnosis.
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“Promising research results cannot be left to gather dust in drawers, without benefiting patients”, this professor of the university clinic in Bonn and publisher of the book “Predictive Diagnostics and Personalized Treatment” knows what she’s talking about: her list of publications consists of over 100 articles in the area of predictive medicine. She even holds a patent to a test which diabetics can use to determine whether they at risk of developing a certain eye disease.
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This medical professional is not the only one who is concerned: recently, the “European Association for Predictive, Preventive & Personalised Medicine” was founded in Brussels. Olga Golubnitschaja is the General Secretary of this organisation, which works together with health insurance companies, politicians and the pharmaceuticals industry to promote a paradigm shift: away from the usually expensive and inefficient treatment of symptoms, to preventing them altogether. A person who knows that they are at risk of developing a certain disease can do something about it: for example by a change in diet, or exercise, or medical check-ups. Or simply by a course of preventive treatment.
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The problem with this “new” medicine, however, is that many companies make less money on it, the best patients you could wish for are chronically ill patients. Patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, arterio-sclerosis, obesity – they’re the ones who make the pharmaceuticals companies rich.
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If everybody were healthy, some managers would be out of a job. Only you can make a change – because pharmaceuticals companies definitely aren’t going to, as you can see here!
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