Health 2050: The Realization of Personalized Medicine through Crowdsourcing, the Quantified Self, and the Participatory Biocitizen

The concepts of health and health care are moving towards the notion of personalized preventive health maintenance and away from an exclusive focus on the cure of disease. This is against the backdrop of contemporary public health challenges that include increasing costs, worsening outcomes, ‘diabesity’ epidemics, and anticipated physician shortages. Personalized preventive medicine could be critical to solving public health challenges at their causal root. This paper sets forth a vision and plan for the realization of preventive medicine by 2050 and examines efforts already underway such as participatory health initiatives, the era of big health data, and qualitative shifts in mindset.