Envisioning the Future: Medicine in the Year 2050

Abstract

Despite massive advances in basic knowledge, technology, and availability of medical and biological data during the past few decades, transformational breakthroughs in medicine have yet to be seen, and yet, a bright future where medicine is can be imagined, in Leroy Hood's memorable formulation, “personalized, predictive, preventative, and participatory.” How will we get to that bright future? As a thought experiment, how a drug for rheumatoid arthritis may be discovered 25 years from now can be imagined in detail, and the additional breakthroughs in technology and processes that will occur in the subsequent decade leading to the mid-century mark can be further speculated. Of course all such predictions are inevitably wrong; but the aim of such prognostication is to stimulate fresh thinking about what must happen for that desired future state to come into existence. Accordingly, the specific and significant changes that must occur across every aspect of the process, ranging from the technologies used to discovery new drugs, to the processes used to clinically evaluate them, to the nature of public policy and the regulatory environment, and to the economics of manufacturing and commercializing the products were discussed. Finally, we highlight that what we expect will still be the barriers facing us at mid-century.