Modern healthcare is less about reactive disease care and more about the proactive enhancement of people health and wellbeing – increasingly taking advantage of innovative methods, tools, and digital technologies. The idea for a medicine that is predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory (so called P4 Medicine) has long been advocated by the American biologist Leroy Hood and the pioneers of ‘systems medicine’.
Today, the core elements of that vision are widely accepted and have been articulated in a series of recent reports by the US Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.
In a nutshell, P4 Medicine is about providing patients and physicians with accurate information about individual health condition and diseases at the molecular, cellular and organ levels. Data allow to treat known diseases better and more cost-effectively by personalizing care and addressing causes rather than mere symptoms. At the same time, data enable advanced predictive analytics and favor prevention, thanks to the opportunity of anticipating possible health problems and related solutions. Patients are encouraged to participate and improve their wellbeing as they observe the impact of lifestyle decisions. From a societal perspective, the P4 Medicine approach is meant to reduce the incidence of complex chronic diseases that currently account for 75% of overall disease-care costs in the US.
The core elements of P4 Medicine came prominently under the spotlight with Covid-19, as the healthcare industry was called to accelerate innovation, quickly bring new products to market, and explore new ways to ensure adequate patient assistance in a highly difficult and uncertain scenario.
Among the technological trends that gained significant ground in 2020 and are expected to remain after the pandemic, there is the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) – that is the application of mature IoT technologies to connect medical equipment and patient devices to a smart network, allowing healthcare professional to deliver proactive care even at a distance.Applications have ranged widely, from connected wearables that report critical patient data in nearly real time to the deployment of smart beds both in hospital and at home.
At Paradox Engineering, we are working with Minebea Intec and MinebeaMitsumi Sensing Division on a highly innovative solution for the managed care industry: our goal is to provide a pervasive, secure, and open platform for remote, non-invasive patient monitoring.
Thanks to this technology, patients and seniors can live longer at home and benefit from continued and reliable assistance during long-term treatments – enjoying superior quality of health, independence, and safety. Hospitals, clinics, nursing, and care houses can offer reliable and efficient remote patient assistance and extend their services, as well as their inpatient capacity. Professional caregivers can be supported and relieved in their daily work, with immediate detection of potentially critical changes in patient conditions.
Our intelligent care platform is revolutionary since embedding Artificial Intelligence. It might seem counterintuitive, but the integration of AI contributes to a more human-centered and empathetic approach to skilled nursing. That’s because AI can be used to correlate and merge patient data for a more accurate health record, a better assessment of patient risk levels and potential disease developments. In some cases, AI can even recommend appropriate treatments and provide physicians with the information they need to fully personalize patient care.
As we are steadily shifting away from traditional, disease-focused healthcare, we are heading for patient-doctor relationship models built on a more empathetic and collaborative experience, where patient data are vital to any treatment they receive and any lifestyle they adopt. In this scenario, the principles of P4 Medicine can truly take off with IoT and AI.