Precision Health Redefining "Value"
While value-based care continues to gain traction by aligning financial incentives with patient outcomes, the very definition of “value” remains highly dependent on perspective. Patients and citizens may interpret value quite differently from healthcare providers, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, or public authorities.
As precision health emerges — offering individually tailored prevention and treatment based on biological, lifestyle, and environmental data — our understanding of value must inevitably evolve. The question is not whether precision health and value-based care are compatible. It is whether we can afford to pursue one in the absence of the other.
From Population Averages to Individual Value
Value-based care has successfully shifted attention from volume to outcomes, yet it continues to rely largely on population-level metrics and standardised care pathways that do not suit every individual.
A diabetes protocol optimised for the ‘average’ patient may be ineffective for individuals with specific genetic variations or distinctive lifestyle factors. The true promise of precision health lies in its capacity to define and measure value at an individual level. By recognising the unique determinants of what constitutes a ‘better outcome’ for each person, healthcare can move beyond averages towards genuinely personalised interventions and a more efficient alignment of resources.
From Treatment to Prevention: Extending the Time Horizon of Value
Value-based care encourages efficiency and effectiveness in treatment; precision health shifts the focus further upstream, towards early identification and prevention.
Intervening before chronic disease develops is significantly less costly than managing it over several decades. Precision health enables the identification of those who require preventive intervention, and the optimal timing for such action. Without this level of precision, prevention strategies tend to be overly broad and less cost-effective. With targeted approaches, however, prevention becomes both clinically impactful and economically sustainable, creating value that accumulates over a lifetime.
Temporal Precision: The Right Intervention at the Right Time
Precision health introduces a temporal dimension to the concept of value.
Digital biomarkers, continuous monitoring, and predictive analytics enable interventions to be delivered at precisely the right moment. Wearable technologies can detect early cardiac irregularities, genomic data can reveal cancer risk years before the onset of symptoms, and artificial intelligence can identify patterns that signal imminent metabolic dysfunction. Such technologies do not merely improve clinical outcomes; they also prevent the escalation of costs by identifying and addressing problems at their earliest and most manageable stages. This form of temporal precision represents a new frontier in healthcare value creation, one that traditional models cannot achieve.
Reconciling Standardisation with Personalisation
At first glance, the need for standardisation in value-based care appears to be at odds with the individualisation inherent in precision health. In practice, the solution lies in smarter segmentation.
Rather than relying upon uniform protocols, healthcare systems must develop frameworks that identify clinically meaningful sub-groups and deliver tailored care pathways at scale. High-quality data, combined with advanced analytics and artificial intelligence, enables individuals to be matched with the most appropriate interventions on the basis of their unique profiles, without sacrificing efficiency.
Reimbursement models must evolve accordingly — moving away from rigid adherence to standardised protocols and towards outcome-based payments that reward effective, personalised care within evidence-based parameters.
Measuring What Truly Matters
The unprecedented volume of health data now available — from genomic sequencing and digital biomarkers to environmental exposure and lifestyle information — offers the opportunity to measure value with a granularity previously unimaginable.
Traditional metrics, such as process compliance, readmission rates, and standardised test results, remain relevant, but are no longer sufficient. Precision health demands the inclusion of outcomes that matter most to individuals, including functional capacity, symptom burden, and overall quality of life.
To achieve this, we require measurement frameworks that are as sophisticated as the interventions themselves, capable of demonstrating not only what works, but also for whom and under what circumstances.
Equity Through Precision, Not Uniformity
Value-based care introduced the concept of risk adjustment in an effort to ensure fairness in provider comparisons. Precision health, however, offers a more transformative approach.
Rather than simply compensating for existing disparities, it enables targeted preventive strategies designed to reduce them. Individuals with a genetic predisposition to cardiovascular disease can receive tailored interventions, while communities exposed to specific environmental risks can benefit from precision-guided public health measures.
In this way, equity is achieved not by treating everyone identically, but by ensuring that each person receives what they specifically need to maintain health for as long and as well as possible.
A Radical but Necessary Transformation
Implementing precision health at scale within sustainable value-based systems requires a radical re-thinking of current structures. It demands the modernisation of reimbursement frameworks to reward prevention and personalisation, substantial investment in data infrastructure capable of capturing individual-level outcomes, the training of clinicians to operate within precision-based, value-oriented models, and the active engagement of citizens as partners in their own health and wellbeing.
Most importantly, it requires the recognition that precision and value are not competing priorities, but complementary imperatives. Precision health reveals what value truly means for each individual. Value-based care provides the structure through which healthcare systems can be organised and funded to deliver it.
This is not a marginal or incremental improvement. It is a fundamental redefinition of healthcare value — and the moment for such transformation is now.
Pascal Lardier, Principal, éditohealth and Content Lead, Radical Health Festival