It is often difficult to understand why a patient may develop terminal cancer, or why one patient responds to a particular medication while another doesn’t. The concept of personalized or translational medicine, which has been gaining popularity in recent years, seeks to answer questions such as these. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment, personalized medicine examines the individual factors that influence the patient’s health, such as genetics, lifestyle, and environment. By looking at the broad scope of the individual’s life, physicians may be able to determine the most effective treatment for the patient. According to a recent article in BusinessWeek, personalized medicine may also open up new opportunities for pharmaceutical and diagnostic companies, which could target new products to smaller but more responsive groups of patients.
Strategic Medicine (SMI) specializes in patient and disease stratification with the end goals of providing better healthcare and identifying unmet clinical needs. The company, based in Kennett Square, Penn., seeks to apply clinical research to a practical, real-world environment. SMI’s products are able to interact directly with electronic medical records or function as stand-alone systems.
SMI is partnered with the Mayo Clinic on an adaptive knowledge platform that analyzes physicians’ treatment decisions compared to clinical guidelines. By combining data from both sides, the company anticipates that physicians will be able to make more informed treatment decisions, and pharmaceutical or diagnostic companies will be able to identify gaps where a new business opportunity may exist.
In this video, Michael N. Liebman, President and Managing Director of Strategic Medicine, discusses his company at the 2010 OneMedForum in San Francisco.
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