2014 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting: Wellness Ultimate Goal in Rheumatology Patient Care

Demystifying Disease

P4 medicine brings patients into a more active role in their own care than they have ever had before, said Dr. Hood. Technology and social media drive this change.

“Consumer-based networks are important for medicine. Inform patients about new technology. Let patients do the crowdsourcing. Social networks are a powerful wedge and a driving force in transforming health care,” he said. “P4 is about quantifying wellness and demystifying disease.”

In the next decade, Dr. Hood foresees a wellness industry will develop to outreach the current healthcare industry focused on disease and treatment. “I think the wellness industry will be transformative. We will investigate wellness-to-disease transitions at the origin of disease. If the trend of the last 10 years continues, 50% of the babies born in the developed world this year will live to 100,” Dr. Hood said.

The 100K Wellness Project launched in March 2014, when ISB researchers began analyzing 107 individuals. They sequenced each person’s whole genome; conducted three annual tests on blood, urine, saliva, and stool; performed three annual gut microbiome tests; and asked participants to self-track exercise and diet with wearable electronic devices. Relevant data are being integrated into a graph that currently has 227,979 nodes connecting genetic and environmental factors. The result is a personal health status profile that is like an “N-of-one” study, Dr. Hood said.

“There will be a time when we can look back and see that those 100,000 people have split into two groups: those who remain well and those who have transitioned to disease,” said Dr. Hood. These collective, personalized data are a “wellness well that can optimize your potential. We will be creating diagnostic and therapeutic tools to enable us to move an individual from disease back to wellness.” This transition would help cut the tremendous costs of treating chronic illnesses, he added.