Human Genomic Data Is Way Too Biased to Be Transformative
Under-representation of non-White ancestries slows gains in precision medicine
You’re one of a kind, so why should your approach to health and wellness be? It shouldn’t, says a new clinical paradigm called precision medicine that creates bespoke treatments for patients based on their genetic and lifestyle characteristics. It’s a complete revolution of the system as we know it. Doctors would no longer use the same one-size-fits-all strategy for charting the clinical courses of their patients.
The end result? Better, safer, cheaper and more efficient health management.
This isn’t just a way of picking which treatments would be most effective for a patient’s condition. The patients’ genetic configurations and lifestyle can be used to craft accurate risk assessments, such that with early interventions, they can potentially stop diseases before they start.
An individual’s genetic data is first fed into a massive database where advanced computing systems match their sequences up with others bearing similar characteristics, creating a roadmap that informs doctors which is the best path to go down for that particular patient.
