Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 1 Differentiation of
biomarkers and number of
possible diagnostic targets
(data retrieved from
corresponding homepages
[
30
])
Fig. 2 Biomarkers will help
to provide diagnostics at
various stages of a disease
even before a patient shows
symptoms. Also during or
after medical intervention
biomarker based diagnostics
will help to follow the
success
1.2 Societal Needs
Having established this type of biomarker-related diagnosis, the accumulation of
relevant data over a time period by electronic means will lead to increasing insight
into long-term effects and later presymptomatic or even prognostic diagnosis may
be achieved (Fig.
2
).
Taking advantage of these new biomedical findings will provide an opportunity
for improved patient-centered care. Hence, biomarker-based diagnostics will not
only be used for curative purposes but also for prevention of diseases, enhance-
ment of therapy success, and in general for increasing the quality of life.
From a more societal point of view diagnostics can effectively reduce costs
within health-care systems. In terms of personalized medicine, collecting data over
time will allow more rational access to the best therapy, and for large collectives of
patients gathering data will lead to valuable information for a health-care system.
Biomarker-based diagnostics will thus help to reduce health-care costs by reducing
the number of second line therapies, reducing treatment costs, reducing the number
of follow-up therapies, reducing nursing, reducing consequential costs, and
reducing the period of sickness absence. In this regard, there are only very few
economic studies about the impact of point-of-care testing. One example has been
undertaken for emergency departments in the U.S. It was shown that fast mea-
surement of the diagnostic marker Troponin directly at the patient can reduce costs
