Personalized Pain Medicine: Turning Theory into Policy

On the one hand, patients, therapists, policy-makers, business people, and health organization managers need to approach medicine from different perspectives, each perspective being appropriate for each role. On the other hand, a lack of appreciation of the perspectives of the other vested interests diminishes their effectiveness in accomplishing what their respective rolesdemand. In this article, weexplain the main difference between these perspectives along a spectrum ranging from highly individualist to highly collectivist views of medicine. We aim to show the gap between personal (individualistic) and social (collectivist) medicine models. We then present possible ways to close this gap. We argue that these differences need to be reconciled, at least to some extent, if medicine is to evolve along with other disciplines, such as engineering, to create and implement personalized solutions to patients’ pains. We conclude by proposing a framework through which patients, practitioners, health organizations, business people, and policy-makers can develop enough of a mutual understanding of each other’s perspectives, problems, and solution orientations to be able to work relatively harmoniously toward the common goal of creating bespoke solutions to individuals’ pains.