Precision medicine, which is also frequently referred to as “personalised medicine,” is a rapidly expanding area of medicine that focuses on finding efficient ways to treat patients based on their genetic, environmental, and lifestyle characteristics. Precision medicine is therefore a place where science meets healthcare, thus ensuring quality care for every patient. While precision medicine continues to grow in the developed world, it has remained absent in the developing world, with Zimbabwe being no exception.
Contrary to traditional medicine, which is still practiced in developing countries and some parts of the developed world alike, precision medicine offers patients with a rare opportunity to access the highest quality of healthcare. The past few years have seen a few African scientists starting to take healthcare into their own hands – a step that has ushered in gradual improvements in the quality of care in the region. For patients to receive the best medical care, there must be constant collaboration between scientists and clinicians. Precision medicine uses a variety of genomic, cellular, and biochemical methods to diagnose and track disease, as well as choose the best course of action for each patient or condition.
Precision Medicine Explained
We have all tried to buy clothing for someone when he or she is not with us or when they have not shared their clothing sizes with us. In this case, we may have ended up returning some of the clothes to the shop when they did not fit the recipient. This is the kind of difficulty doctors have to face day after day when they prescribe medicines. Like that poor shopper, doctors would need to gather all the essential data on their patient for them to choose the right medicine for them. In precision medicine, scientists must gather all the data on the patient that would allow doctors to make informed decisions as they prescribe medicines for optimal patient recovery and experience. Besides, this is the way in which we can reduce the cost of healthcare when we prescribe drugs correctly.
The Cell Biotech Institute (CBI), the brainchild of Professor Walter Chingwaru – one of Zimbabwe’s best biomedical scientists, presents patients in Zimbabwe and elsewhere in Southern Africa, with a rare opportunity to access this cutting-edge form of medicine. Efforts by CBI and a few other Zimbabwean scientists marks a turning point in Zimbabwe’s healthcare practice. The idea to establish the CBI was born after Prof. Chingwaru noticed a growing list of complex diseases in Zimbabwe and the rest of Southern Africa. Of major concern is the recent increase in cases of cancer, diabetes and gut complications and the ongoing HIV epidemic in Zimbabwe! Patients often present with a growing list of side effects when they take prescribed drugs, which sometimes prompts doctors to try yet another set of drugs on the patients. Such form of medicine, largely characterised by trial and error, has seen better days and is likely to disappear – thanks to the novelty of precision medicine.
How Can A Patient Access Precision Medicine in Zimbabwe?
Here is an example of a pipeline that can be followed in order for patients to access these services: (1) a patient with a rare, complex or chronic illness, for example cancer, diabetes, HIV…, would contact the company, (2) a team of CBI experts examine the patient’s case, (3) the CBI team collaborates with the patient’s doctor to diagnose and monitor the disease, while the former study diseased or other tissues from the patient’s body in their laboratory, (4) the CBI team of scientists may subject the tissues to a battery of tests to establish the best treatment, and (5) in the end, the CBI scientists discuss their findings with the doctor, and provide an evidence-based treatment opinion.
To ensure that quality in precision medicine, CBI experts undertake to continuously update their skills and methods so as to stay on top of their game – thus allowing the company to remain a formidable link between formal medicine and biomedical research. The CBI strategy therefore becomes the first significant attempt by Zimbabwean scientists to weed out guesswork from healthcare – meaning doctors can now capitalise on the opportunity and prescribe only those medicines that improve disease outcomes in their patients.
Every Individual is unique, Let us Treat Them That Way!
We may all be aware of the fact that every individual is unique. Consequently. every disease episode is also unique. As depicted in the shopping story above, it is common practice for doctors to adopt a one-size-fits-all approach when they treat diseases – meaning they tend to prescribe one kind of medicine for a particular disease – irrespective of differences that exist between disease episodes and between patients. For instance, some diseases may not respond well to medicines, and some patients may be allergic to specific treatments.
Indiscriminate Use of Drugs Widens Antibiotic Resistance Problem!
Guesswork in medicine is one of the reasons why patients recover slowly or end up dying despite the availability of several drugs against a particular disease. Besides, it is the indiscriminate use of drugs that explains the widening problem of drug resistance across the globe. Personalised medicine was introduced to circumvent such problems in healthcare. We use genomic, cellular and biochemical approaches to determine the variations that exist between patients and their illnesses. This ensures that each patient receives the most suitable medicine at the right time, therefore increasing their chances of recovery. This way, patients would have greater peace of mind and make great savings.
While CBI is a new kid on the block in the Zimbabwean healthcare space, it is proud to use state-of-the-art next generation technologies to study your disease and determine the best treatment options for your disease. We select medicines based on the response of your disease to existing and experimental drugs. Through this service, CBI ensures greater peace of mind in all our patients, as well as help you minimise the total cost to recovery.
This article first came out on cell-biotech.com: Cell Biotech Institute is a research and innovation company that uses cutting-edge cellular technologies to diagnose, monitor, and establish best-in-class therapies against rare and complex illnesses.
