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UnDisciplined: Is predictive, personalized treatment the future of medicine?

White middle-aged male doctor greets white middle-aged male patient. They shake hands.
Vic/Flickr
Our healthcare systems are designed to help people once they have a disease – not to keep them from getting sick in the first place.

When we debate the future of medicine, it's often in the context of social versus private systems. And that's an important discussion to have in a country where the largely private employer-based medical system costs us more, but gives us poor outcomes. But what if that's not the real problem? What if medicine itself is simply structured in the wrong way?

Nathan Price is the chief scientific officer of Thorne HealthTech, and a professor at the Institute for Systems Biology in Washington. And the co-author along with Lee Hood, of the recently published book, The Age of Scientific Wellness: Why the Future of Medicine Is Personalized, Predictive, Data-Rich, and in Your Hands.

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Matthew LaPlante has reported on ritual infanticide in Northern Africa, insurgent warfare in the Middle East, the legacy of genocide in Southeast Asia, and gang violence in Central America. But a few years back, something donned on him: Maybe the news doesn't have to be brutally depressing all the time. Today, he balances his continuing work on more heartbreaking subjects by writing books about the intersection of science, human health and society, including the New York Times best-selling <i>Lifespan</i> with geneticist David Sinclair and the Nautilus Award-winning <i>Longevity Plan</i> with cardiologist John Day. His first solo book, <i>Superlative</i>, looks at what scientists are learning by studying organisms that have evolved in record-setting ways, and his is currently at work on another book about embracing the inevitability of human-caused climate change with an optimistic outlook on the future.<br/>