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The stuff sounds like science fiction, like something distant in the future.
However, according to the vice president of a leading pharmaceutical company, such things are not too far in the future -- perhaps within the next generation or two.
Elizabeth Klimes, vice president of Six Sigma for Eli Lilly and Company, spoke Thursday evening at Ohio Northern University's business college, as part of a lecture series.
Klimes spoke about Six Sigma, a methodology developed to improve drugs by eliminating defects.
Six Sigma, she said, is working on ways to tailor drugs to specific patients to maximize the benefits of drugs for all patients.
"Medicine is a game of knowledge and too often it's played poorly because of poor information," Klimes told an overflowing auditorium with students sitting on steps and filling aisles. "I am certain the medicines of tomorrow will far outperform even the best of what we have today. I also believe it's not inevitable."
She said realizing this future will depend on policy choices -- policy choices in which everyone will play a role.
With 16 percent of the nation's gross domestic product going to health care, she said the health care system is undergoing massive changes and challenges.
"The key to improvement is knowledge -- information at the right place, at the right time," Klimes said. "We must continue to invest in and provide a system that awards scientific innovation. We must promote policies that put those patients in control of their own health care decisions."
With the way the health care system is today, Klimes said, people would be inclined to think it has failed.
As a result, she said, a lot of people believe the country should go to a uniformed, nationalized health care system.
"They have been given numerous chances around the world and have not worked," Klimes said of government health care. "American medicine is, indeed, the best in the world. Our challenge is to deliver at the same level of our technical expertise."
Additionally, she questioned who has a patient's best interest in mind.
"Who has the greatest interest in mind when you make the health care choices?" she asked. "You or your senator? ... Years from now, the stories we tell about patients will be dramatically different than those we tell now."
However, she explained, one thing will never change.
"Human mortality will always equal 100 percent," Klimes said, before concluding the lecture.
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.
To see more of The Lima News or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.limanews.com. Copyright (c) 2007, The Lima News, Ohio Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
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