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As an entry point to the subject of personalized medicine, the attached video presentation from  David Asch (Wharton Healthcare Professor) is quite brilliant.  David packs a lot of important issues into his 6 minute presentation (from IdeasLab in Davos this year, 2010).  Please take a look.  A few brief comments to follow.

Ok, I am going to come back to this topic in future posts.  In the last 30 seconds of this video Dr. Asch presents a couple of issues relevant to healthcare in the United States and other wealthier nations.

First, personalization will create many more niche markets for therapies.  Historically, large pharma has directed its research and development efforts toward very large markets.  The issue in front of us is to develop economic models that support innovation within smaller, more targeted classes of therapies.

Second, how do we manage the low risk members of the population in an era of personalized medicine?

What interests me is how the personalization of risk can evolve our health insurance models towards incentivizing lower cost and higher quality care.

Stay tuned…