Institute For The Future

From Bench to Bedside to Embedded

The promise of translational medicine to integrate clinical research with health care interventions more seamlessly has been fraught with pitfalls since its inception over a decade ago.  Clinical science, on the whole, remains isolated from the other disciplines that contribute to the production of good health at the community level.  

A 21st Century view of translational medicine will require a much more complex approach to health.  The emerging field of translational health will blend scientific discovery, health services research, urban and community studies, behavioral economics, the management of change, and other fields, to support ecological health systems from the early research phase to successful health outcomes.  

The traditional research pipeline will no longer be limited to a bench to bedside model. Community-level interventions will facilitate collaborative approaches across disciplines reflective of a more integrated view of what research is needed.  Embedded technologies will enable remote monitoring and less invasive interventions, which, in turn, will open up new avenues for testing, observing and informing research.

Through leveraging new mobile technologies, we will be able to design research to reflect more accurately

our daily routines and the corresponding health effects, but justifying this dramatic change in how medical research is done will be tricky. Translational health interventions will still require rigorous testing, and practitioners, policy makers, and the public will need to see evidence of improved health outcomes. To evaluate the efficacy of translational health interventions, new metrics and benchmarks will be needed, and cost effectiveness measurements will need to include more variables than just accounting for reduced hospitalizations and prescription drugs costs.