Precision medicine promises new age of healthcare

And tests are now able to survey the antibodies present in a person's bloodstream to reveal a history of the viruses they've been infected with throughout their life. This could be useful not only for diagnosing current and past illnesses, but for developing vaccines and studying links between viruses and chronic disease.

Additionally, the history of viral infection revealed by these tests can help to better explain host immunity and better target treatments for complex diseases such as Type I diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and asthma.

Digital medicine platforms such as those being developed by Proteus Digital Health are improving our monitoring and measuring of medication adherence during treatment plans.

Platforms being built today include measurement tools such as sensor-enabled pills, a peel-and-stick biometric sensor patch worn on the body and smartphone apps. The patch records when a pill is ingested and also tracks other things such as sleep patterns and physical activity levels.

Monitoring real-time compliance to treatment, and ultimately the ability to correlate compliance with improvement in vital signs, could well be another critical tool to constantly adjust treatment protocols that ultimately create the best possible patient outcome.

These innovations point to the potential for a new age in healthcare, one of personalized medicine that can improve patient health outcomes and reduce healthcare costs to sustainable levels.

However, we need some big changes in regulatory frameworks, pricing models and doctor incentive systems to make this new paradigm of healthcare possible.