Current medicines are designed for general treatments which are standardized for the majority. This is an issue engineers have to deal with. DNA variants give rise to the difference of individuals, in this case, response to medicine treatment. Therefore, personalized medicine is an ideal way and also the future direction to give effective and optimum healthcare decisions. There are three challenges for personalized medicines. First, generate systems for quick accessibility to individual’s genetic profile. Second, create methods for storage and management of the tremendous amount of genetic data. Third, invent affordable and effective equipments to identify small amount of chemicals in blood. The randomized clinical trials to test drug’s worth and safety only provide an average result, not specific to an individual. Besides, engineers are to invent new approach in aiding delivery of drugs to target cells while bypassing the body’s natural immune response. The emergence of the new study “synthetic biology” in replacing or repairing damaged cells has also deterred the creation of personalized medicine. Personalized medicines bring about numerous benefits. First of all, it gives an early warning or indication to patients on disease or risk of disease. Diseases can then be treated or prevented at earlier stage and avoid inessential treatment while ensure the best dosage of medicines is applied. However, disclosure of individual’s genetic profile will raise ethical and social problems. Drug-resistant infections have been a major concern in the medical sector where now engineers come to in to play. Natural selection takes place when drugs failed to get rid of the microbes, leading to the growth and eventually dominating the cells and they continue to be infective. Efforts have been done in fighting drug-resistant infections. Engineering is needed in designing methods to overcome multiple drug-resistant infections. This is done by searching for potential alternative drugs. Chemical engineers are posed to a challenge in inventing new group of drugs from plants or bacteria living in harsh and remote environments. Other than that, hybrid treatment is another way to fight multiple drug-resistant infections by using a combination of drugs and antibiotic. Above all, the in-depth knowledge on the resistance of viruses is essential for mapping out tactics to avoid pandemics. One challenge to the biomedical engineers is to design antibiotics that work on specific organisms only. In general, engineers have to develop therapies with higher degree of precision, efficiency and effectiveness. The professionals have to also deal with viruses that disrupt the protein synthesis process of RNA. Engineers have to make possible the production of incisive and credible vaccines to accommodate the needs in areas where infectious diseases are pandemics. The great amount of vaccines is of utmost importance in cases like this (National Academy of Engineering, 2008).
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References
National
http://engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9129.aspx
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