Medicine made for you part 3: Your treatment

Medicine made for you is a series from The Anthill, a podcast from The Conversation. Across three episodes we're taking a deep dive into the future of healthcare – to find out how it could soon get a lot more personal.

In this third and final episode of the series, we’re exploring how treatment offered by your doctor could become more tailored to you in the future.

In the past, if you walked into a pharmacy and told them you weren't feeling well, the pharmacist would probably have made up a powder for you – your own personalised medicine. But with the introduction of antibiotics and modern medicine which is much more regulated, this personalised service fell away.

Come the 21st century, some researchers are looking at ways to introduce more personalisation back into pharmaceuticals in the future – using 3D printing. We find out more.

This episode also explores other ways researchers are looking to personalise the treatment options available to patients, from new ways of doing cancer screening trials, to social prescribing – programmes where GPs refer patients to a host of other services in the community to help improve their health and wellbeing.

Featuring interviews with Professor Robert Forbes at the University of Central Lancashire, Professor Mike Messenger at the University of Leeds, Dr Alison Fixsen from the University of Westminster and Chris Dayson, principal research fellow at Sheffield Hallam University.

The music in this episode is Is That You or Are You You? by Chris Zabriskie, Hallon and FB-01_#2 by Christian Bjoerklund and Serenade for String Orchestra, No 20 by Edward Elgar performed by US Army Strings. Medicine made for you is produced and reported by Holly Squire and Gemma Ware, and hosted by Annabel Bligh for The Anthill podcast. A big thanks to City, University of London, for letting us use their studios.

Read more about precision medicine and the personalisation of health in our series of articles on The Conversation. You can sign up to get a daily digest of facts each day by signing up to our newsletter.