Opinion: Biomarkup: creating or promoting medical tests to drive revenue
As our health system faces an explosion in testing through genomics and digital measurement, we must address the potential for either intentional or unintentional overtesting and overtreatment.
The appearance of symptoms — a breast lump, blood in the stool, chest pain, and the like — were once the first signs of disease. Today, the search for illness, and with it the possibility of early intervention, is becoming increasingly proactive and moving beyond screening tests such as mammography, colonoscopy, and cholesterol measurement. And in the digital and genomic age, individuals are playing ever-expanding roles in early disease detection, using our smartwatches to monitor our heart rhythms or spitting into tubes and having our DNA sequenced.
At first glance, that seems to make sense. Frequent checks can spot diseases early, and that’s
