You know more about your own physical, mental, and emotional health than anyone.
When you get sick, you may turn to a physician for healthcare, but what is happening outside your doctor visits? Most chronic diseases, like heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer’s, and cancer can actually go undetected for years or even decades before being diagnosed and treated: we are changing that.
We are developing the tools to predict disease in advance of it even happening, detect it early when it does, and devise strategies to fight disease well before it takes root. How? By defining what it means to be well, understanding health at a deep level, and supporting wellness in the absence of disease. Dr. Dennis Ausiello pointedly remarked that healthcare is the only industry that doesn’t understand its own gold standard: wellness. Your body has a wealth of information that we are not using in the current medical system, especially if you are not experiencing symptoms that can be easily classified into the current medical diagnostic codes. We believe everyone has the right to the information inside their bodies whether they feel sick or not.
Your genetics have a lot to say about the likelihood you will develop certain diseases or not. Your blood carries volumes of information about how you’re currently doing and where you’re headed. Wearables, like smart watches and other technologies, can also add a lot of clarity to your health picture—but none of these are currently being used effectively by our health system. Your “phenome” is the product of your genetics, your behavior and your environment, and it holds the secrets to your health.
At Phenome Health, we think about "healthspan," or the measure of our personal wellness over the duration of our entire existence. We consider wellness support as a crucial complement to healthcare. We understand that the current model of personal healthcare is one that involves regular doctor visits, screenings, and disease diagnosis and treatment. We're changing that model and moving into the future with a new approach to wellness, which we call P4 Medicine.
The 4 Ps in P4 stand for Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory. The term was coined by Dr. Leroy Hood to describe his holistic framework for detecting and preventing disease through expert biological understanding, close monitoring, deep computational analysis, and patient engagement.
We’re driving a paradigm shift in healthcare—to head-off the diagnosis and prevent disease altogether, not simply extend support when you receive a diagnosis. P4 medicine is the key to wellness support. We will be unpacking P4 Medicine over a series of blog posts, but for an overview, we invite you to read Dr. Hood’s visionary congressional testimony.
