How Technology Integration Supports Precision Medicine

Health systems are integrating multiple platforms, including artificial intelligence and data analytics software, to deliver personalized medicine to patients. As patients expect more tailored approaches to care delivery, providers are moving away from one-size-fits-all solutions and toward personalized medicine, or precision medicine, which analyzes aspects of a person’s genes, environment and lifestyle to find the right treatments. The goal of precision medicine is “optimizing the patient’s quality of life and chances of survival by getting the treatment plan right from the get-go,” says Jennifer Eaton, research director for value-based healthcare digital strategies at IDC Health Insights. “When you’re talking about precision medicine, it’s about subsegmenting the population into strata and trying to find the solutions that work for those specific segments of populations,” says Nimita Limaye, research vice president with IDC Health Insights. Tufts Medicine in Burlington, Mass., is one health system deploying the IT infrastructure necessary to personalize care.