Personalized Medicine Through Tech: A Possibility for Mexico

Mexico is among the top five countries in Latin America with the best conditions to integrate and promote effective preventive, diagnostic and therapeutic personalized medicine, according to the Latin American Personalized Medicine Index.

The index ranks countries based on their use of technology, workforce and academic contributions to personalized medicine. Mexico was ranked fourth for its advances in creating a sustainable health system for personalized medicine. Built by Roche and The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, the index was designed to aid in the creation of parameters to meet current and future health care needs. Its definition of personalized medicine is based on technology, so “decisions regarding the care of each patient are based on the prediction of their response or the risk of the disease.” Through a comprehensive approach to data, personalized medicine can transform the lives of patients by providing health care that is tailored to their needs.

Mexico is leading in the use of electronic clinical records (ECR), according to the index. “In addition, Mexico has widely implemented telemedicine, taken advantage of technology and ensured coordination with stakeholders to analyze the ethical implications of new advances in medicine,” reads the index.

To improve its health services, Mexico could benefit by better planning, organizing and delivering services that would promote personalized medicine. In Latin America, Mexico ranked first in the publication of academic articles on personalized medicine and in telehealth. The country also ranked second in quality and access to medical records. However, the country ranked much lower in the availability of practicing physicians, R&D investment, evidence-based guidelines and equality. The index urges Mexico to improve its data infrastructure, “which should be a key area of focus so that personalized health can continue to grow in Mexico.”

Technological advances, attitudinal shifts and the ubiquity of personal devices open a new door to facilitate better self-management of diseases, said María Jesús Salido Rojo, CEO of Social Diabetes, to MBN. “We can put the doctor in the patient's pocket thanks to smart apps that generate personalized insights from data, universally and openly collected from devices, whatever their origin,” said Salido. This will allow each patient to become a consumer node and generator of digital information.

Moreover, this technology will allow patients to carry their medical history with them and share it wherever they, making them “nodes of an infrastructure from which we do not have to actively seek data, rather data is collected automatically to provide a decision-making support system for both patients and professionals.”

Salido said that building platforms on which different stakeholders, including caregivers, payers, retailers, pharma industry and researchers, can design new user-based services by generating patient-centric value chains will ensure access to care, information and treatment.