Health expenditure has reached above 10% of the gross domestic product in most Western countries with an upward trend indicating that 20% may already be reached in the present decade, unless something drastic can turn the tide (1). Prevention is the vision, but many such efforts remain to translate into disease regression and major economic savings. Therefore, it may be worthwhile to examine if current principles for disease management can be changed in a cost-effective way.
Nuclear medicine offers a unique instrument that may, in several diseases, accomplish this task if used early and strategically in the course of disease. The mantra is: individualised diagnosis and therapy. What is needed is an ‘instrument’ that can change the mindset of doctors and healthcare decision-makers from conventional to more unconventional thinking and doing. This instrument in the hands of nuclear medicine is molecular imaging.
