Shen-Han Lee

London’s Medical Student Newspaper recently ran a feature interview of Dr Elias Zerhouni, the big guy of that obscenely cash-abundant institution just to the northwest of D.C. Read the full piece of work here.

One thing that caught my eye was the last part of the interview, when Dr Zerhouni was asked of his views on where the future of medicine lies. He replied:

“Well, fasten your seat belt because it’s going to be fun. Medicine is going to change more than ever; firstly its knowledge content is going to improve tremendously. Also, instead of being curative and intervening when patients are sick you are going to have to intervene much before the disease actually strikes.   We will be in era of 4 P’s.  Predictive medicine, 

Personalisation regarding genetic variation,

Pre-emption, the natural consequence of knowledge, and finally

Participatory, the patients will be more involved in their own health care.” 

His words really got me very, very excited. Excited that the future holds so much promise!