{"id":265159,"date":"2026-01-30T09:41:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/265159\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T09:41:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T09:41:08","slug":"forum-health-financing-framework-must-support-personalised-medicine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/265159\/","title":{"rendered":"Forum: Health financing framework must support personalised medicine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">I read with much sympathy the letter \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.straitstimes.com\/opinion\/forum\/forum-insurance-policies-must-evolve-with-rising-cancer-diagnoses-among-younger-people?ref=inline-article\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"gap-x-04 items-center inline text-primary-60 select-auto\" aria-label=\"link\" target=\"_blank\" data-testid=\"custom-link\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular inline\" data-testid=\"paragraph-test-id\">Insurance policies must evolve with rising cancer diagnoses among younger people<\/p>\n<p><\/a>\u201d (Jan 28). <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">In Singapore, existing funding frameworks such as MediShield Life and the associated Integrated Plans currently exclude coverage for many preventive interventions despite being medically recommended, leaving patients at risk of shouldering substantial out-of-pocket costs.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">As a public health specialist, I am concerned that our health financing framework is not keeping pace with how medicine is increasingly practised today.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">As the writer relates, healthcare needs to be prevention-focused, addressing high-risk states before progression to disease. <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Future healthcare needs to take advantage of advances in genomics, metabolomics, proteomics, microbiome medicine and others to also be personalised.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">In an era of precision medicine, insurance should help patients access the right drugs and interventions to personalise treatment for each person\u2019s disease.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">However, drug and other intervention reimbursement policies are often binary \u2013 a  drug or intervention is on the approved list, or it is not. <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">These are blanket policy decisions binding to everyone without regard for exceptional situations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">What happens then to patients for whom drugs deemed \u201cnot cost-effective\u201d are actually highly efficacious for them because of their particular genetic and epigenetic profiles? <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">This may be uncommon today but will become mainstream in precision medicine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Binary policies based solely on the cost-effectiveness of a\u00a0drug or intervention at population level, such as the Standard Drug Lists and the Cancer Drug List, are useful for pricing negotiations with manufacturers and as formulary starting points. <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">However, as Singapore embraces precision medicine and invests billions in genetics and epigenetics, we have to ensure our financing models and philosophies keep pace, and in timely fashion. <\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Like preventive\u00a0interventions, personalised medicine can save lives and be cost-effective, but only if financing mechanisms are aligned and supportive.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"font-body-baseline-regular text-primary\" data-testid=\"article-paragraph-annotation-test-id\">Dr Jeremy Lim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I read with much sympathy the letter \u201c Insurance policies must evolve with rising cancer diagnoses among younger&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":265160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[163,521,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-265159","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/265160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}