Mongo e a medicina personalizada

Há anos que escrevo sobre Mongo... Mongo é um planeta de diversidade, um planeta em que deixou de haver norma, um planeta em que todos são excêntricos em pelo menos algum aspecto que consideram importante na sua vida.

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Um dos aspectos em que Mongo se vai manifestar é na Medicina e na Big Pharma.
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Primeiro, a medicina personalizada, o que vamos ver como utilizadores:

"One of the most innovative medications of recent years is Novartis’s imatinib, which is marketed as Gleevec. Introduced in 2001, it set a record for the fastest approval time by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and in 2011 had US$4.3 billion in sales. Imatinib was the first of a new class of drugs that act by inhibiting a specific enzyme — in this case, a receptor called tyrosine kinase — that is characteristic of particular cancer cells. Because only certain cancers will respond to imatinib, it is prescribed only for patients identified by specific diagnostic tests (for example, the Philadelphia chromosome abnormality test).
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Imatinib is an example of the products emerging from a new pharmaceutical field known as personalized medicine (PMx): the tailoring of drugs and other treatments to specific populations, based on their genetic profiles or other differentiating factors."

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Segundo, a certeza de que a PMx vai ser cada vez mais comum:

"When physicians and patients can draw upon a wealth of genetic and biological data, personalized therapy will become the norm, not the relatively rare occurrence it is today."

Terceiro,quais as implicações para quem produz (o tema que mais interessa a um estudioso de ecossistemas empresariais):

"The greatest impact of this new approach to individualized diagnosis and treatment will probably be felt in the pharmaceutical industry.
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In adopting PMx, they are all [as farmacêuticas que se meteram neste desafio] embracing a new healthcare model that emphasizes segmentation of patients, and decisions and practices tailored to individuals or small groups. Although this approach might lead to smaller revenue pools for pharmaceutical producers, PMx can actually improve their profits. A business model based on differentiated products can reduce the system-wide costs and complications of one-size-fits-all medications, provide new opportunities for marketing, and establish new efficiencies in production and distribution.
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But of all the constituents, pharma companies face the greatest disruption from personalized medicine. It forces them to adopt a new business model with a counterintuitive value proposition, requiring unfamiliar new capabilities to make it work. (Moi ici: Não é fácil passar do modelo mental assente na escala, no volume, para o exactamente oposto... o individual)
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Back in the age of economies of scale, most drug companies’ business models depended on producing therapies for the largest number of people with unmet medical needs
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The rise of personalized medicine provides pharma companies and healthcare providers with a value proposition different from the one they’re accustomed to. The standard pharmaceutical mass-marketing approaches, with global distribution and advertising, are too expensive and cumbersome for personalized therapies.
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“The advent of precision medicine,” write the authors, “heralds product-line fragmentation in pharmaceuticals. Volumes per therapeutic compound will drop significantly, as the number of therapeutic compounds expands. Blockbuster drugs will become rare. This will necessitate a reshaping of the business model of today’s major pharmaceuticals companies because — to borrow words from oil exploration, in the future there will be fewer big gushers to cover the costs of drilling a lot of dry holes.”"

Trechos retirados de "A Strategist’s Guide to Personalized Medicine"