Personalized Health Manifesto: An Old-Fashioned Call to Arms and Action Plan for a New Age of Health Care

8 Pages Posted: 27 Oct 2010

See all articles by David Ewing Duncan

David Ewing Duncan

Center of Life Science Policy, University of California, Berkeley

Date Written: October 2010

Abstract

Despite the promise of a new era of health care in which medicine has shifted from treating conditions to emphasizing prevention fueled by individualized care, a significant gap remains in realizing its benefits because of outmoded attitudes, protocols and procedures targeted for treating mass populations. Such is the core argument and motivation behind the “Personalized Health Manifesto,” released as a part of the 2010 Translational Medicine Alliance Forum (TMAF).

Written by journalist and best-selling author David Ewing Duncan and funded by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the manifesto is “an old-fashioned call to arms and action plan for a new age of health care” that takes direct aim at the challenges of integrating and implementing personalized health care in the United States and seeks to accelerate the incorporation of personalized health into the current health care system.

The manifesto’s “action plan” aims to set a new direction for health care, emphasizing prediction, prevention, individualized care and healthy wellness to ensure that the best medicines make it to the marketplace and optimize patient care. By focusing on the whole human organism, the manifesto challenges the prevailing use of drugs and protocols to target populations and averages rather than individuals. It further outlines the necessary groundwork for speeding up the process of moving from research to new drugs and other products and treatments by introducing more effective models that will ultimately improve health and reduce health care costs.

The manifesto was prepared with input from life science leaders representing medicine, business, government, patients, law and the media. Although the work is solely that of the author, these advisors have endorsed the manifesto, and many of them are convening at the TMAF today. The manifesto organizers hope to acquire the endorsement of at least 500 life science leaders by the end of the year. Anyone who reads the manifesto can add their name to the list of endorsers and leave comments by visiting www.kauffman.org/healthmanifesto.

Keywords: health care, personalized, manifesto, prevention, individualized, policy, costs, life science

Suggested Citation

Duncan, David Ewing, Personalized Health Manifesto: An Old-Fashioned Call to Arms and Action Plan for a New Age of Health Care (October 2010). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1698146 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1698146

David Ewing Duncan (Contact Author)

Center of Life Science Policy, University of California, Berkeley ( email )

310 Barrows Hall
Berkeley, CA 94720
United States

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