Health insurers may agree to reward subscribers who follow recognised healthcare regimes, the founder of Vivas Health has stated. Advanced diagnostic tests would validate whether healthy life options were being adopted.
Vivas chief executive officer Oliver Tattan made these comments in Dublin yesterday at the formal launch of the Biomedical Diagnostics Institute. The €22.5 million research facility is based at Dublin City University.
The Taoiseach Bertie Ahern attended the official opening of the institute, which currently employs more than 60 Irish and international researchers. The institute "aims to deliver the science and technology that will drive a revolution in health management", Mr Ahern stated.
It also had the potential "to make a major contribution to the growth of our economy", he added.
The institute is an industrial-clinical-academic research collaboration focused on the development of advanced biomedical diagnostic devices. These would be used at "point of care" by clinicians working with their patients.
The institute is based at DCU but includes leading scientists from the Royal College of Surgeons, NUI Galway and University College Cork.
Funding to establish the Institute came from Science Foundation Ireland and from its six industrial partners, Amic, Analog Devices, Becton Dickinson, Enfer Scientific, Hospira and Inverness Medical Innovations/Unipath.
Tattan's comments came during a discussion on the question: "Who will monitor your health? Benefits and risks of future diagnostic technologies." It formed part of the first annual symposium organised by the institute, which has been in operation for about a year.
"The notion is to reward people for taking personal responsibility for their health," Tattan said.
"As people sign up to a personal health management regime which would involve diagnostic monitoring, healthcare providers would reward subscribers for helping to reduce risks."
The institute's focus is the development of tests that can diagnose disease and also detect risk factors that may predispose a person to a disease, stated its director, Prof Brian MacCraith.
The tests are based on identifying "markers" in blood, breath or saliva that can give early warning of illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
Diagnostic tests can then be developed to detect the presence of the markers in samples from the patient.