Engineering Doctors - Personalized Medicine

Engineering is of paramount importance in this era where the promise of personalized medicine and deadly infectious diseases are to be tackled. Drugs and treatment exercised today are normally catered for the mass due to technological constrain and economical reasons. However the response of treatment and effectiveness of the drug differ for every individual. For example, the common drug prescribed by the local pharmacist to treat fever is paracetamol but not every individual’s immune system can work together with this drug to kill the fever-causing bacteria. This is the part where biomedical engineering come in to produce specific treatment and medicine for these individuals. Recent cataloging of the human genetic endowment, and deeper understanding of the body’s complement of protein and their biochemical interactions, offer the opportunity to identify the specific factors that regulate sickness and wellness in any person. (Cited from “Introduction to the Grand Challenges for Engineering” , http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9221.aspx). To realize the promise of personalized medicine, engineers encounter three main challenges which are developing better systems to rapidly assess a patient’s genetic profile, collecting and managing massive amounts of data on individual patients and to create inexpensive and rapid diagnostic devices such as gene chips and sensors able to detect small amounts of chemicals in the blood. (Cited from Engineer better Medicine, http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9221.aspx). Just in 2007, an approximated 8 million people died of cancer due to late detection of the disease and lack of proper treatment. People around the world are dying because they do not have access to the correct medical care for their disease or the cost of treatment is very high. Personalized medicine will enable one to receive accurate drugs so that diseases can be detected earlier, treated accurately and ultimately cured in the shortest possible time. Moreover, it will reduce the cost of having multiple treatments just to cure a disease, as the drug manufactured will suit an individual specifically. In brief, personalized medicine is still in the early period where rigorous Research and Development are to be done to explore deeper into this field. Men will reap numerous benefits with the advance of medicine engineering which makes it “The” Grand Challenges of Engineering.