Discovering precision health : predict, prevent, and cure to advance health and well-being / Lloyd B Minor, Matthew Rees.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LLOYD MINOR, MD, is the Carl and Elizabeth Naumann Dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine as well as a professor of otolaryngology–head and neck surgery and a professor of bioengineering and of neurobiology, by courtesy, at Stanford University.

MATTHEW REES is the president of Geonomica, an editorial consulting firm in McLean, Virginia, and a senior fellow at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business. He has worked as a speechwriter at the White House and a journalist for the Wall Street Journal and the Economist.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
About the Authors ix

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction The Power of Precision Health 1

Chapter 1 The State of U.S. Health and Health Care Delivery 15

Chapter 2 There’s More to “Health” Than Health Care 33

Chapter 3 The Innovation and Disruption Powering Progress in Health 43

Chapter 4 Fundamental, Discovery‐Focused Research: The Foundation of Biomedical Breakthroughs 111

Chapter 5 Peering into the Future: Leveraging The Powers of Prediction to Help Prevent Illness 147

Chapter 6 Prevention as a Pathway to Health and Wellness 177

Chapter 7 Curing Disease with More Precise Medical Therapies 207

Conclusion Achieving Precision Health: The Opportunities—and Challenges—Ahead 237

Notes 243

Index 259

"One of the motivations for launching Precision Health was to confront an uncomfortable reality: in the United States, there's a lot about U.S. health conditions, and our health care system, that's unsatisfactory. To be sure, the United States can be the very best place in the world to obtain the latest, most scientifically advanced treatments for severe diseases for those who have access to these services. But there are dramatic disparities in health, and access to high-quality health care, based on factors such as income and geography. There are also shortcomings embedded in the U.S. health care system, which is one reason why we spend more on health care, on a per-capita basis, than any other country, but our health indicators (such as life expectancy) put us on par with countries that spend less-much less. In this chapter, I examine both U.S. health conditions and U.S. health care, and show how millions of Americans are not seeing the health benefits that are typically associated with living in a high-income country such as the United States"-- Provided by publisher.

Today we are on the brink of a much-needed transformative moment for health care.

The U.S. health care system is designed to be reactive instead of preventive. The result is diagnoses that are too late and outcomes that are far worse than our level of spending should deliver. In recent years, U.S. life expectancy has been declining.

Fundamental to realizing better health, and a more effective health care system, is advancing the disruptive thinking that has spawned innovation in Silicon Valley and throughout the world. That's exactly what Stanford Medicine has done by proposing a new vision for health and health care. In Discovering Precision Health, Lloyd Minor and Matthew Rees describe a holistic approach that will set health care on the right track: keep people healthy by preventing disease before it starts and personalize the treatment of individuals precisely, based on their specific profile.

With descriptions of the pioneering work undertaken at Stanford Medicine, complemented by fascinating case studies of innovations from entities including the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, GRAIL, and Impossible Foods, Minor and Rees present a dynamic vision for the future of individual health and health care. You’ll see how tools from smartphone technology to genome sequencing to routine blood tests are helping avert illness and promote health. And you'll learn about the promising progress already underway in bringing greater precision to the process of predicting, preventing, and treating a range of conditions, including allergies, mental illness, preterm birth, cancer, stroke, and autism.

The book highlights how biomedical advances are dramatically improving our ability to treat and cure complex diseases, while emphasizing the need to devote more attention to social, behavioral, and environmental factors that are often the primary determinants of health.

The authors explore thought-provoking topics including:
The unlikely role of Google Glass in treating autism
How gene editing can advance precision in treating disease
What medicine can learn from aviation
Discovering Precision Health showcases entirely new ways of thinking about health and health care and can help empower us to lead healthier lives. Provided by publisher.

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