A specter is wandering in the fight against Covid, and not only: it is called “precision healthcare”, the belief that better results can be obtained when acting on targeted populations, selected with big data and algorithms.
Nature gives the example of a team of New York epidemiologists who, instead of handing out Covid tests and masks at random – when the epidemic hit the city in April 2020 – used data from hospitals and laboratories that indicated it as the virus wasn’t hitting New Yorkers evenly. Thus, it was possible to send the anti-Covid safeguards where and in the quantities in which they were most needed. “Hyper-local-pubblic-health”, they called it. And it wants to apply to healthcare the criteria that have transformed medicine with the advent of genomics and the possibility of building targeted and more effective treatments on specific subpopulations of patients. The idea is fascinating, who has never had the feeling that prevention interventions lacked a focus and that often the messages and tools did not hit the mark? But many experts doubt that tracing with big data and designing algorithms can achieve results. Because, as David Taylor-Robinson of the University of Liverpool pointed out, health care has essentially the task of improving the health of the population; the term “precision” of “precision healthcare”, on the other hand, refers to individuals, not populations.
Covid: for one chronically ill patient out of 2 increased criticality of care
And this is the core of the debate, of which in Italy, however, there is no trace. Doing health care means improving the living conditions of all, in the case of Covid we are talking about plans for chronicity, basic assistance, mass vaccinations. With big data and algorithms, assistance is focused on specific emergencies. One could argue: why not both approaches coordinated? True, but be careful because around the corner there is always the risk of getting drunk with technologies, forgetting that welfare is, instead, the backbone of public health. And, as proof, Nature notes that, in the face of a substantial stalemate in investments in healthcare (in the US), there has been a 4.3% increase in those in “precision healthcare”.
Dialogues on the future. Health: the year to come
Dialogues on the future. Health: the year to come
by Daniela Minerva
