Synergistic Approaches of Cross-Fertilization and Feedback Together Driving and Advancing Health for All

We are at a point in time with rapid advances occurring in digital technologies, developing a range of new quantifiable markers termed “digital biomarkers,” which are increasingly utilized for diagnostics, as well as defining new operative mechanisms of health and disease. In parallel, significant advances have occurred in precision medicine, utilizing breakthroughs in “omics biology,” coupled with our understanding of their impact across systems in “systems biology.” Contemporaneously, a new approach to thinking of how health and disease evolve and impact an individual has emerged—that of considering mechanisms and impact across scales, i.e. on a “multi-scale” level, extending from the patient down to the molecule, and similarly from the patient up to society. In this chapter details of each of these approaches, their evolution and key current concepts are outlined. Moreover, the main theme and postulate developed in this chapter outlines the interconnectedness and the way in which each approach informs each other. In essence a cyclic, reinforcing, feedback loop exists, connecting digital technologies with precision and personalization approaches, across systems and scales, leading to enhanced diagnostics, the potential for new therapeutics and increasing insight into mechanisms. This cyclic flow of information will lead to new, more exacting technologies, with the ultimate outcome of enhanced efficacy, safety and improved health outcomes for patients and society.