Stephen C Schimpff's Blog – April 2012 Archive (3)

Medical Megatrends – Genomics Part III

Genomics promises to fundamentally change much of medical care as described in the two prior posts on this subject.  But the ultimate value of this new understanding of basic human biology will in many cases come with fits and starts. The saga of belimumab (Benlysta) and Human Genome Sciences is illustrative.

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) occurs in somewhere between 300,000 and 4 million Americans according to the…

In the previous post I discussed the field of pharmacogenomics. Today I will focus on

            Disease classification

            Disease prognostication

            Early and rapid diagnosis

            Prediction of diseases to develop later in life

Genomics is proving to be very valuable in disease classification, especially with cancer. A pathologist’s evaluation looking at a microscopic slide has been the basis for most cancer…

There are a series of medical megatrends outlined in my book The Future of Medicine – Megatrends in Healthcare that will profoundly affect health care in the coming five to fifteen years and beyond. Some are due to the explosion of basic understandings of cellular and molecular biology. Others are related to advances in engineering and computer science. Here is a very brief overview. 

These are the megatrends in medical care that are…