There is a critical role for Service design in healthcare, turning a practice of treating illnesses into preventing them, for which those preventions are tailored to each individual’s need. “We are on the cusp of some of the greatest opportunities for transformation in diagnosis, treatment, and disease prevention,” president and CEO of Boston Children’s Hospital, Sandra L. Fenwick, told Forbes’ online magazine. Up until this time, advancements in healthcare came about from trials requiring massive funding, taking place over years, if not decades.
The treatments and the healthcare system operates on statistics, probabilities that someone will improve or not, based on population samples. In short, health practitioners are offering patients their best guess. Meanwhile, Kan S. Lee, Ph.D., a retired researcher from the National Institutes of Health, offered his opinion that we have advanced to the point of being able to diagnose someone before they become ill based on genetic testing. The advancements along these lines are moving us closer to having the capability to map each individual’s DNA for the potential of acquiring any variety of illness. As this technology becomes more accessible health practitioners will shift toward more preventive care.