Hi Sara,
I think we will have made amazing strides! Just thinking about Pharmacology, one of the areas that is really going to take off is personalised medicine. That’s when a doctor analyses your genetic make-up to decide which medicines will work best for you. At the moment, we don’t take much notice of this kind of thing but it is really important. Have you ever had the strong painkiller co-codamol? It’s paracetamol mixed with the opioid (morphine like) drug codeine. Most people feel a bit sleepy if they’ve had some codeine, but don’t get any serious effects. However, the way codeine works is that your body slowly metabolises it to morphine (that’s where the pain killing effect comes from). Some people have a gene difference that makes them metabolise codeine to morphine really quickly. These “ultra-rapid metabolisers” can get serious side effects if they take codeine, especially if they are children. In fact, there was a case where a mother who was an ultra rapid metabolizer took codeine and there was so much morphine in her breast milk that her baby died. With advances in gene sequencing, we can find out if people are going to have this kind of problem before it happens, and then give them an alternative medicine.
Best wishes
Richard
I think we will definitely have more cures/ treatment options for certain diseases, and a drastic change in the use of Pharmacology. Also, as Richard mentioned personalised medicine will be at the forefront of use. However, I think that due to the NHS cuts, the project may be hindered.
Vedia is right in implying that this is expensive technology to implement. However, it is getting cheaper. Also, there are potential SAVINGS to be made in the long run because you don’t waste money on medicines that have no chance of working.
The Government has an organisation called NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) that analyses whether new tests and treatments are worth spending money on. For medicines, they use look at something called a QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year). This is how NICE defines a QALY.
“A measure of the state of health of a person or group in which the benefits, in terms of length of life, are adjusted to reflect the quality of life. One QALY is equal to 1 year of life in perfect health.
QALYs are calculated by estimating the years of life remaining for a patient following a particular treatment or intervention and weighting each year with a quality of life score (on a zero to 1 scale). It is often measured in terms of the person’s ability to perform the activities of daily life, freedom from pain and mental disturbance. ”
NICE assesses how many QALYs a treatment will produce and has a limit of the cost per QALY. This is how it decides how good-value a treatment is. The usual limit per QALY is £30000. You can read more about NICE on their website: http://www.nice.org.uk/
Best wishes
Richard
Comments
Richard commented on :
Vedia is right in implying that this is expensive technology to implement. However, it is getting cheaper. Also, there are potential SAVINGS to be made in the long run because you don’t waste money on medicines that have no chance of working.
The Government has an organisation called NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) that analyses whether new tests and treatments are worth spending money on. For medicines, they use look at something called a QALY (Quality Adjusted Life Year). This is how NICE defines a QALY.
“A measure of the state of health of a person or group in which the benefits, in terms of length of life, are adjusted to reflect the quality of life. One QALY is equal to 1 year of life in perfect health.
QALYs are calculated by estimating the years of life remaining for a patient following a particular treatment or intervention and weighting each year with a quality of life score (on a zero to 1 scale). It is often measured in terms of the person’s ability to perform the activities of daily life, freedom from pain and mental disturbance. ”
NICE assesses how many QALYs a treatment will produce and has a limit of the cost per QALY. This is how it decides how good-value a treatment is. The usual limit per QALY is £30000. You can read more about NICE on their website:
http://www.nice.org.uk/
Best wishes
Richard