We Are All Zebras: How Rare Disease Is Shaping the Future of Healthcare

We Are All Zebras: How Rare Disease Is Shaping the Future of Healthcare "When you hear hoofbeats, think of horses, not zebras," Dr. Woodward told his medical interns in the 1940s to teach them the art of diagnosis. That was then. This is now. Now there's precision medicine, a revolution in healthcare based on the rare disease model. Precision medicine sees the zebra in all of us and focuses not on what makes you part of the herd, but what makes you unique. You Are Not Average Your treatment shouldn't be average either! What Is Precision Medicine? Right now, medicine is mostly off-the-rack. Precision medicine is custom-made, not for It's a revolution in the way we treat and prevent disease, using cutting-edge technology to match patients with treatment. you as an individual, but for many different subtypes of people. Genomes, Proteomes, Metabolomes, Oh My! Genetics are important, but they're not the whole story. Your susceptibility to disease also depends on microbes that live in or on you, your environment and your diet. Why Data Is the Key Rare Is Leading the Way Rare communities are models of precision medicine. They've also shown us how to organize, advocate, collaborate, share health data, fund research and help the FDA. Big data and advances in technology are what make precision medicine possible. The more we know, the more targeted treatments can be and the more people we can help. |$D The President's Precision Medicine Initiative What About the Cost? Rare Informs the Common' Powered by Patients The US spends more per person By definition, each rare disease Precision medicine puts patients on healthcare than any other affects less than 200,000 people. at the center, providing them with personalized care. It relies on empowered patients, like those Obama set aside $215 million developed country and yet our health outcomes are among the But there are 7000 rare diseases and asked 1 million people to and together they have a huge contribute data on genetics, worst. But precision medicine may impact. Discoveries in rare who have made strides in rare biological samples, and diet/lifestyle to help the National Institutes of Health (NIH) identify help costs go down and care diseases like familial disease. Welcome to the future of improve by eliminating waste, avoiding treatments that won't work and reducing chronic illness. hypercholesterolemia lead to healthcare! By advocating and knowledge that can be applied collaborating, we'll make things new targets for treatment and prevention, test the impact of to more general conditions, like high cholesterol. better for all. mobile devices and lay the foundation for precision medicine for many different diseases. Zebras Unite! • Spread the word by sharing this infographic • Do take it personally • Be proud of your stripes Siren Find out what you can do: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2015/01/30/precision-medi- cine-initiative-data-driven-treatments-unique-your-own-body interactive A Dohmen Company 1. Moalem S. Inheritance: How Our Genes Change Our Lives and Our Lives Change Our Genes. New York, NY: Grand Central Publishing; 2014. Join the conversation on SirenSong Siren Interactive Corporation OOO This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NODerivatives 4.0 International License. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/deed.en_US) BY NO ND