What is Population Medicine?

Is population medicine the same thing as population health? If it isn’t, what is the difference? Population medicine is a relatively new term that has come into use, one that is misunderstood by many private citizens, according to Wired. From telemedicine to Google’s giant new health study, let’s take a look at what population medicine is and how it’s already affecting the total population of America

Defining Population Medicine

Population medicine can be defined as a series of activities, taken by one healthcare system alone or in conjunction with partners in different sectors, to promote total population health beyond individual needs. In laymen’s terms, it’s the series of actions that the healthcare system takes to make sure that everyone in the country is as healthy as possible. The term generally only refers to the healthcare sectors when discussed among experts in the field, but it can also mean the steps that social services, education, and even businesses take for the overall population. Because population medicine is a broad term, its definition does include multi-sector approaches for population health.

Differences From Population Health

Population medicine is different from population health in that population medicine describes actions being taken towards protecting a population’s health while population health describes the outcomes of those actions. This means that they are two steps going for the same goal: the best possible health of a population or, in some cases, the total population of a nation. Population health, then, is informed by population medicine; the actions taken create the results that population health analysts and experts take into account when reporting on and studying the health of a population. The two terms also different in one other way; while population health can mean global health or a particular demographic, population medicine targets a total population, such as the population of a nation.

Current and Future Uses

Without realizing it, population medicine has been in use since the creation of societies and nations. Because the health of a nation’s population is critical to that nation’s success, population medicine has been used for centuries to promote good health habits and preventive medicine. Current examples of this are mobile medical visits for busy people, healthcare regulations on everything from surgeries to medications, vaccination policies, and the use of electronic health records for seamless delivery of healthcare. In the future, big technology companies, like Google, are pulling together the data they have on their users in order to compile databases on baseline health factors of society. These studies will then be used to influence health policy in the future, allowing governments to determine what are and aren’t good health practices for their populations.

Implications

The implications of population medicine can be hard to determine, especially in a world where most people have already internalized the fact that none of their data is private. In fact, the study mentioned in the beginning of this article illustrates this point: Google is using a selection of their user’s data, with consent, in order to compile a baseline population medicine study. But these people must sign a consent form that states their data may be bought and sold by third parties. Population medicine will most likely see criticism hit soon as more and more people realize that in order to keep the population healthy, some data must be shared.

The fact is, population medicine is a new term for actions taken by the healthcare sector that has been around for centuries; the sector is just more efficient now than it used to be. While population medicine has noble ideals in mind, it is yet unseen whether or not this specialization will have negative effects on the population it is being used to protect. Now that we have covered what population medicine is, everyone can move forward with greater knowledge about this term.

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