Editorial – Personalized medicine in a post-pandemic world

by. Prof. Asoc. Dr. Voltisa LAMA

Over the past almost two years the health system was focused to respond and resolve the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not yet the end of the pandemic, still, we need to see the future and learn how to adapt and how to equip the health system to respond more efficiently to possible other medical challenges in a new era. One of the topics of discussion is how will evolve medical care post-COVID.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global experience that tested the ability of national health systems to withstand health shocks while maintaining routine functions. The pandemic exposed long-standing gaps in the health system and further accelerated the crisis. The healthcare workforce faced with dedication the overload of patients in hospital and outpatient services. On the other hand, the people faced fear, uncertainty, illness and death, social disconnection, and economic difficulty.
There have been lessons learned during the pandemic years and the pandemic had definitely changed the vision of healthcare’s future. There is a need to address several post-COVID challenges, firstly how to transition from COVID care to traditional healthcare services. People need the care of other pathologies, some of them newly emerged while the pandemic postponed preventative screening and medical appointments has hindered surgeries and delayed testing on biopsy tissue, as well as other chronic conditions which were placed in the secondary issues because coronavirus world health emergency took the first place. Despite medical and fatal complications attributed to coronavirus, clinicians noted that they resulted not only from the virus, but also from the coronavirus’s deteriorated effect on chronic and/or underlying undetected conditions which were specific to individuals.
Secondly, there were variable effects of the SARS-COV-virus in patient groups with similar characteristics and this polymorphic nature of patients’ clinical course has inspired research about the molecular factors that contribute to disease progression and differentiated response in each individual patient. Humanity’s struggle with the coronavirus has fostered a new appreciation of the principles of personalized medicine, especially the value of diagnostic tools that could have helped target prevention strategies to at risk populations. Thus, the vision of the future is a personalized medicine approach, which holds promises of prediction, prevention and treatment of illnesses that is targeted to the needs of the individual.
Despite the impact of the COVID-19 crisis it does present the healthcare system with an opportunity to redesign itself. The next decade probably will bring a medical care model transformation. By 2030, the primary focus of healthcare will shift from a “one size fits all” approach towards risk definition, patient stratification and personalized health promotion and disease prevention strategies, which are especially valued for aging societies. The technological advances in laboratory sciences and the data-rich era will lead to biomarker testing recommendations, disease screening protocols, and targeted therapies for patients into standard practices.