User Designer

Personalised medicine is focused on delivering “the right drug, for the right person, at the right time”. Potential patients undergo tests that measure individual differences in their physiology and genetics. These tests can then be used to help decide which drugs should be administered in what dosages.

In the Wired article “Where’s My Personalized Medicine?” you can read more about existing methods that enable personalisation of drugs. In the longer term it should be feasible to create drugs that are optimally adapted based on individual differences in genetic makeup (Pharmacogenetics).

Most of the research and projects I’ve mentioned so far have tended to enable the user to have more freedom by giving them more control. The user is in charge of personalising and adapting.

In personalised medicines we find an example where it probably isn’t feasible or acceptable to let the user design and adapt the (non-recreational) drugs. Are there certain objects that should be adaptive to the user without letting the user explicitly adapt them? Are there certain things that should be fixed in form and function? If so what are the characteristics of adaptive (that which adapts to the user) but not adaptable (that which the user can alter) objects?

On a separate but related point: I wonder what home medicine cabinets will be like in the future? Will they have a spit here slot which when used causes the cabinet to quickly sequence your genome and then pop out some individualised pills? Or could it be far more subtle where when you use the restroom the toilet paper gets automatically infused with personalised medicines? Wipe your way to a healthy lifestyle!