engleski

STEM as a stem of a more cost-effective personalized medicine

STEM is an acronym for academic disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics and is used to describe scientific education. A comprehensive list of STEM disciplines does not exist but the list among others includes: physics, chemistry, biology, biochemistry, genetic research, neurobiology, neuropsychology, psychology, biomechanics, bioinformatics, nanotechnology, robotics, mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, chemical engineering, pharmacology, mathematics, mathematical biology, operations research, statistics, electronics, information technology, acoustical engineering, radiology, and environmental sciences, just to mention the ones of interest to personalized medicine. Economics considers a Pareto improvement if at least one of the two, or preferably both of the following results are achieved: firstly, one may achieve the same effects at lower costs, and secondly, one may achieve better results at same costs. Finally, one tends to achieve both: better results at lower costs. The three combinations are all Pareto improvements and are part of the economic evolutionary development process called innovation. Innovation is a process of ideas hybridisation. Just as biological sexual evolution, the human technological evolution is also based on recombination of information, and that is not a metaphor. Innovation with recombination of ideas for humane purposes requires virtue, and virtue equals cooperative behaviour that requires institutions. Institutions are rules shaping human behaviour, strengthening mutual trust for the purposes of cooperative behaviour. Without cooperation there is no recombination of ideas, no multidisciplinary research, and no progress. One scientific discipline is not enough. Cooperation among and between sciences in a multidisciplinary environment is a necessary precondition for innovation and improvements in medicine in general and in the subfield of personalized medicine in particular. Personalized medicine is an attempt to make medicine more efficient and less costly, by making it more patient centered and thus less redundant. We shall give some examples of how interdisciplinary work may create some innovation in personalized medicine. Medical problems are getting more complex, more specific, and more personal indeed. Personalized medicine gives us thus the ability to analyse problems more quickly, and more specifically. Only the availability of sophisticated and specialised technologies in an open, networked, dynamic and collaborative social environment enables us to combine and recombine the available scientific resources so that they better address the requirements at hand.

Economics, innovation, personalized medicine, STEM

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