Word: patients
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...just in new technologies but also in expanding existing programs to control and detect TB before it even becomes resistant. And dots (Directly Observed Treatment, Short Course) is a critical part of that strategy. Developed in the 1990s, the program requires health officials to be present to watch their patients take their complete course of medications, even if it means visiting them in their homes. In many regions, these officials are now recruiting a host of nonmedical personnel, including family members and religious and community leaders, to become DOTS enablers. In Punjab, retired teachers, shopkeepers and cured patients are paid...
...Roche sees diagnostic machines and test kits as crucial to assessing and treating disease in the future. That belief, in turn, has led to a laser-sharp focus on "personalized medicine." So, for example, an oncologist will use a genetic test to pinpoint the exact kind of cancer her patient has and then proceed with a highly specific treatment course of Roche drugs. "For a long time, we acted as if all cancers are homogeneous," says David Heimbrook, Roche's V.P. for oncology discovery. "Now, because we can quickly analyze a tumor in greater detail, we have a much better...
...demand for cancer drugs, for one, will grow exponentially with this treatment approach. But more important, Roche can now use biomarkers to determine much earlier in the R&D process whether a drug will pan out. Down the pipeline, diagnostics identify which patients most benefit from a therapy, giving clinical trials tailored to that subset a better chance of succeeding. Moreover, any patient for whom the drug wouldn't work or whom the drug could harm can be excluded...
...marketed specifically to destroy cancers containing the her-2/neu protein, which doctors can detect using a 21-gene screen diagnostic. Herceptin has helped thousands of women combat breast cancer. But there's no doubt it has also helped Roche's bottom line: at $40,000 a year per patient, Herceptin grew globally in sales nearly 25%, to $4.1 billion, last year. "You need self-confidence to take risks," Schwan says. But, he adds, "if you are successful, you must be even more thoughtful about the future rather than dwelling on the past." And that prescription may be just what...