The theme of last year’s Medical Automation Conference was “patient discovery”-i.e. the idea that identifying molecular pathways in individuals’ illnesses could play the role that drug discovery has held in medical advancement.  An illustration of that comes from the University of London where researchers discovered an inhibition (through genetic or environmental factors) of the hormone-like growth factor progranulin is present in some patients with frontotemporal dementia and in others suffering from malaria and angina pectoris.  Drugs that may successfully treat the malaria and heart rhythm pain may work as well on a subset of dementia patients.  The need is to discover which patients have the targetable drug pathway.  MORE