ArticleMedicine, health care, and philosophy2016
The new holism: P4 systems medicine and the medicalization of health and life itself.
Article in Medicine, health care, and philosophy, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 55 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
55 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Definition of whole person care in general practice in the English language literature: a systematic review.BMJ open · 2018Pooled it
- Transcriptomic signatures of mind-body transformations therapy in breast cancer: Downregulation of the interferon signaling pathway.Breast (Edinburgh, Scotland) · 2026Article
- An Apple-watch all day keeps your life astray-or does it?Scandinavian journal of public health · 2026Article
- Article
- Precision prevention and the temporal disruption of evidence: the case of heart rate notifications from wearables.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2026Article
- Rethinking medical education through systems biology to address complexity.NPJ systems biology and applications · 2026Review
- Targeting low-value laboratory care.Clinical chemistry and laboratory medicine · 2025Article
- Pharmacist-Driven Chondroprotection in Osteoarthritis: A Multifaceted Approach Using Patient Education, Information Visualization, and Lifestyle Integration.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Conceptual scaffolding for the philosophy of medicine.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2025Article
- "My Biomarkers Are Fine, Thank You": On the Biomarkerization of Modern Medicine.Journal of general internal medicine · 2025Article
- Toward multiplex health: integrating complexity, normativity, and Open Science.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Enablers and barriers to a quaternary prevention approach: a qualitative study of field experts.BMJ open · 2024Article
- Will Big Data and personalized medicine do the gender dimension justice?AI & society · 2023Article
- Precision public health in the making: examining the becoming of the "social" in a Swiss environmental health population-based cohort.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- The illusion of immediacy: on the need for human synchronization in data-intensive medicine.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- Possibilities and paradoxes in medicine: love of order, loveless order and the order of love.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2022Article
- Engaging Through Awareness: Purpose-Driven Framework Development to Evaluate and Develop Future Business Strategies With Exponential Technologies Toward Healthcare Democratization.Frontiers in public health · 2022Article
- Megatrends in Healthcare: Review for the Swiss National Science Foundation's National Research Programme 74 (NRP74) "Smarter Health Care".Public health reviews · 2022Review
- What is morally at stake when using algorithms to make medical diagnoses? Expanding the discussion beyond risks and harms.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The emerging concept of systems medicine (or 'P4 medicine'-predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards 'precision medicine'. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holistic rather than reductionist. This article analyzes its concept of holism, both with regard to methods and conceptualization of health and disease. Rather than representing a medical holism associated with basic humanistic ideas, we find a technoscientific holism resulting from altered technological and theoretical circumstances in biology. We argue that this holism, which is aimed at disease prevention and health optimization, points towards an expanded form of medicalization, which we call 'holistic medicalization': Each person's whole life process is defined in biomedical, technoscientific terms as quantifiable and controllable and underlain a regime of medical control that is holistic in that it is all-encompassing. It is directed at all levels of functioning, from the molecular to the social, continual throughout life and aimed at managing the whole continuum from cure of disease to optimization of health. We argue that this medicalization is a very concrete materialization of a broader trend in medicine and society, which we call 'the medicalization of health and life itself'. We explicate this holistic medicalization, discuss potential harms and conclude by calling for preventive measures aimed at avoiding eventual harmful effects of overmedicalization in systems medicine (quaternary prevention).
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.