Precision Medicine – From Treatment to Prevention

The key to personlised medicine is precision in diagnosis

Dr Sundardas D Annamalay, CEO Sundardas naturopathic clinic

It was my pleasure to attend the Precision Medicine For Malaysia workshop on the 28th of November, 2019.

Precision medicine is a dynamic field that integrates the latest research advances with clinical treatment. It aims to treat the individual, not the “average” patient in many areas from cardiac disease to diabetes to cancer.

I would like to thank all panellists for bringing their expertise and experience about precision medicine around the table and engaging in such fruitful, constructive and open exchanges throughout the workshop. 

What is Precision medicine?

PM is a dynamic field that integrates the latest research advances with clinical treatment. It aims to treat the individual, not the “average” patient in many areas from cardiac disease to diabetes to cancer. 

PM also well known as personalised medicine. Furthermore, it is a new boundary for healthcare which combine genetic testing, population health and the analysis of big data. 

Here is what I’ve learned about the advantages of PM:

In fact, since the start of history recording, healthcare professionals always aimed to improve and make their actions more effective for their patients. 

Healthcare professionals trying hard and facing challenges of finding new and treatments that give more successful health outcomes.

For this purpose, PM aims to give more accurate, proactive, precise and impactful treatment for individuals. 

PM works on the very basic concept that one inidividual can show different signs and symptoms in each disease. Moreover, it depends on their genetics, environmental factors, and lifestyle.

DNA test provide you a personalised genetic report and give you some guidance on what your body is genetically predisposed to. It helps to find out the DNA predispositions towards certain diseases.

For example, you can modify your life in a better way by understanding your genetic makeup for common nutrition traits.

On top of that, PM can be used as a significant tool to prevent diseases and cancer by early detection through genetic screening.

Malaysia and precision medicine

Based on the National Health and Morbidity Survey 2015, about 66% of Malaysians have at least one out of the three non-communicable diseases (NCDs), which are high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol levels (hypercholesterolaemia).

Precision medicine can also help to identify and prevent one of the most widespread NCD in Malaysia, which is hypercholesteremia. According to the health minister, 1 in 2 individuals has high cholesterol.

Major challenges in Malaysia today

According to Dr Fazilah Shaik Allaudin, Senior Deputy Director, Planning Division, Ministry of Health Malaysia (2019), the major challenges that Malaysia is facing would be as follow:

1. The impact of diseases
2. Population health status
3. Ageing population
4. New tech & services models
5. Financing & sustainability
6. Health workforce
7. People’s needs and expectations

Role of government in digital healthcare

The government plays a vital role in improving and developing the healthcare sector in five major ways:

1. Provides leaders with vision & goals that aim to develop digital strategies, advocacy and trust.
2. Policy, regulation, and legislation. For example, a regulatory framework that includes healthcare practice, data ownership, privacy and security.
3. Giving access to professionals in terms of facilities, funds and the patient’s data for research and analytics purposes.
4. Provide capacity building for research and education
5. Collaborative platforms, innovation system and private partners.

Role of universities in healthcare digitisation

On the other hand, universities also play an important role in the expansion of precision medicine field by the following:

• Educating and training students to prepare them for the future
• Providing more research opportunities.
• Collaborating with government and industries
• Evaluating digital health projects 

If Malaysia wishes to compete with other developed countries in the field of precision medicine, the government will need to initiate wise measures to improvise, as well as to build up the master plan of healthcare in the nation. Ready or not, we must ride the rails of personalised medicine and be a considerable opponent.

On top of that, one of the most important branches of PM is precision oncology .

Precicison oncology is an innovation approach to target your unique form of cancer by designing the treatment specifically to a particular cancer.

I’ve learned a lot from Dr Muhammad Azrif Honorary President, Malaysian Oncological Society about the importance of precision oncology and how it could predict the body’s response towards a certain type of treatment and its toxic effects to the body.

All in all, I believe that the Malaysian government and healthcare experts are doing their best to improve the precision medicine field and to ensure that everyone stays in the pink of health. This event has enlightened my mind about the importance of the recent advances in Personalized medicine and how the role of precision pathology could help patients with a high risk of certain diseases.