The future of healthcare--information based medicine.

The paper discusses how information based medicine has become an increasingly important model of healthcare. Today's patients are better informed and therefore play a more active role in their own healthcare, fuelling the drive towards personalized medicine. Information Based Medicine enables researchers to design targeted therapeutics and rapidly develop best practices guidelines to enable healthcare providers to deliver the most complete individualized healthcare solutions. Information based medicine is realized thanks to growth in four key areas Clinical Genomics, Medical Imaging, Targeted Pharmaceuticals, and Inormation Systems. Also discussed, is how technological advances throughout this decade are changing the discovery, development and delivery of new treatments--with healthcare becoming increasingly personalized as a result. A glimpse into the future of personalised heealthcare is presented, highlighting scenarios in development today along with the challenges and perspectives which lie ahead.