Health 2050
faster cure via bioinformatics and quantified self; a design analysis
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Abstract
Four areas make up 75% of our healthcare costs: cardio-, onco-, neuro- and metabolic diseases. These are largely preventable, even reversible. Instead, they are currently often ‘managed’ and made chronic, not cured. This is too costly. Research is showing new opportunities for enhancing our body’s self-repair in a matter of hours or days. Our research question: what could be an intervention- and bio-feedback portfolio to promote health self-repair within hours or days? There are large cross-domain differences regarding: intervention aims, (self-)measurement options, focus on symptoms vs. causes, plus degree of attention for health self-management. Given recent research into rapid cure, we advise advanced daily bioinformatics feedback, using molecular biomarkers. This creates a quantified self ‘endoself’, showing key biological opportunities for cure and self-repair. Thus, we shift from the current ‘antibiotics/external fix’ paradigm of healthcare to a ‘wound healing’ paradigm, improving use of resources in health.