Jakarta Healthcare personalization can help patients receive the right treatment and predict unwanted responses to unfit drugs, according to Herawati Sudoyo, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher from Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology.

“Because there has been a pharmacogenomic test. Tests with the genomic background are now available,” she noted during an online discussion on ‘Innovating Diagnostics, Shaping Healthcare, and Saving Lives’, here on Saturday.

The medical sector is becoming more advanced, and it can be seen from every patient who benefits from the offered treatment, she added.

From the presented data, eight types of drugs in each population were examined, she explained. In the Indonesian population, researchers found two classes of drugs that need to be prescribed more carefully, one of which is anti-epileptic drugs because they can cause hypersensitivity, she said.

“The frequency is high in the Mentawai and Nias ethnic groups. Given the data, we should be careful to prescribe the drug,” Sudoyo added.

In this case, healthcare should involve a system that evaluates patients’ reactions to drugs so that clinicians can provide appropriate doses of treatment and interventions before a decision is made, she said. Therapy can also be applied for drug safety and efficacy, she added.

Healthcare personalization can also allow everyone to have better access to treatment at a relatively low cost, she said. This approach changes the “broomstick” model of treating diseases, she added.

Under more personalized healthcare, when patients come to a health facility, their symptoms and laboratory results are compared to millions of similar patients, Sudoyo explained. Then, the results are matched with the types of treatments proven to have a high potential for success, she said.

The shift to personalization of health services is important, considering that the number of patients suffering from non-communicable diseases has increased every year, she added.

Source: Antara News