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Personalized Care Is A Necessity Today
Disease management has today become synonymous with personalized care. A disease such as cancer, in particular, which affects more than 10 million people worldwide annually, is known to assume many diverse forms so that treating the disease is tantamount to treating each patient as an individual case. Therapy decisions and its administration within such a personalized approach not only play a very significant role in the patient’s course of disease management and outcome but also on the overall cost of care.
Correct selection of therapy using diagnostic approaches that are directed towards improved long-term patient survival is a key to realizing benefits of personalized medicine and individualized care.
Diagnostic Tools Make Therapy Choices An Asset for Disease Management
Cancer management is fortunate to have several proven, standard-of-care therapy options available to a patient. These options differ widely in toxicity, effectiveness and cost, ranging from combinations of generic, inexpensive drugs to targeted, branded, biological formulations. Although the availability of choices is a boon to patient care, selection of a specific therapy for an individual is not. Among the major diseases, the average success rate of standard therapies in cancer is only about 25%.
As a patient, and as a healthcare provider, the choices for therapy have to be utilized as an asset. It is, however, a clinical reality that not every tumor responds the same way to a therapy because of the diversity in patient characteristics and in the nature of their tumors. To make the available therapy choices a true asset, we need tools that decipher these diverse characteristics to match a patient to the therapy with the best possible resulting outcome.
Targeted, market-driven, and patient-centric diagnostic tests are a significant piece to solving the puzzle of personalized medicine and healthcare costs.
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