Journal Article

The Application of Preventive Medicine in the Future Digital Health Era

Lee, Hyobin, De la Torre, Katherine, Kang, Daehee, Min, Sukhong

2025

Overview

A number of seismic shifts are expected to reshape the future of medicine. The global population is rapidly aging, significantly impacting the global disease burden. Medicine is undergoing a paradigm shift, defining and diagnosing diseases at earlier stages and shifting the health care focus from treating diseases to preventing them. The application and purview of digital medicine are expected to broaden significantly. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the shift toward predictive, preventive, personalized, and participatory (P4) medicine, and has identified health care accessibility, affordability, and patient empowerment as core values in the future digital health era. This “left shift” toward preventive care is anticipated to redefine health care, emphasizing health promotion over disease treatment. In the future, the traditional triad of preventive medicine—primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention—will be realized with technologies such as genomics, artificial intelligence, bioengineering and wearable devices, and telemedicine. Breast cancer and diabetes serve as case studies to demonstrate how these technologies such as personalized risk assessment, artificial intelligence–assisted and app-based technologies, have been developed and commercialized to provide personalized preventive care, identifying those at a higher risk and providing instructions and interventions for healthier lifestyles and improved quality of life. Overall, preventive medicine and the use of advanced technology will hold great potential for improving health care outcomes in the future.

• Publisher: Journal of Medical Internet Research,Gunther Eysenbach MD MPH, Associate Professor,JMIR Publications
• Subject: Access / Affordability / Aging / Artificial Intelligence / Breast cancer / Breast Neoplasms - prevention & control / Cancer / Case studies / Chronic illnesses / Clinical outcomes / Commercialization / COVID-19 / COVID-19 - epidemiology / Customization / Diabetes / Digital Health / Disease / Diseases / E-health / Empowerment / Epidemics / Evidence-based medicine / Forecasts and trends / Future / Genomics / Health aspects / Health care / Health care expenditures / Health care reform / Health education / Health promotion / Health services / Health status / Humans / Medical imaging equipment / Medical technology / Medicine / Medicine, Preventive / Methods / Oncology, Experimental / Pandemics / Patients / Population aging / Precision Medicine / Preventive health services / Preventive medicine / Preventive Medicine - methods / Preventive Medicine - trends / Quality of life / Risk assessment / SARS-CoV-2 / Telecommunications / Telemedicine / Telemedicine - trends / Traditional medicine