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Personalized medicine From double helix to health care By Jeffrey D. Briggs “Where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
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ersonalized, evidence-based medicine has been the goal of physicians ever since Hippocrates declared nearly 2,400 years ago that diseases should no longer be attributed to the influence of superstitions and supernatural forces. The founder of modern western medicine, however, didn’t have many diagnostic tools to work with in ancient Greece, just the four humors—black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood—to determine the best treatment for a patient.
The perioperative surgical home A new model for improving patient care By J. P. Abenstein, MSEE, MD
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he surgeon might be top notch, the quality of the nursing care exemplary, and the hospital rated among the nation’s best, but these do not guarantee the quality or efficiency of patient care. Patients undergoing surgery and other invasive procedures in U.S. hospitals often enter a system that—despite the high skills and extensive experience of the personnel, and all that modern med-
ical technology has to offer—can be fragmented, with inefficiencies that create a barrier to delivering high quality and safe medical care. It’s a problem that costs patients, hospitals, payers, and the health care system millions of dollars each year in inefficiency and waste; delayed and cancelled surgeries; postoperative The perioperative surgical home to page 10
Today, personalized medicine has remained the goal of every physician treating each individual patient. The diagnostic tools have changed. Hippocrates’ four humors have been replaced with, among other tools, the four chemical building blocks that comprise DNA to transform the value of medical care delivered to specific individPersonalized medicine to page 12