Personalized Medicine:
More about this in the 'OMICS' section
Overview
Personalized Medicine is the concept that managing a patient's health should be based on
the individual patient's specific characteristics, including age, gender, height/weight, diet,
environment, etc. Recent developments in genetic testing allow the development of
"Genomic Personalized Medicine" and "Predictive Medicine", which is the combination of
comprehensive genetic testing with proactive, personalized preventive medicine.
Personalized medicine is not solely about genomics. Personalized medicine is about you,
the health consumer. Personalized medicine also allows your health care provider, such
as your physician, to focus his/her attention on what makes you "you", instead of abiding
by generalities.
Promise of Personalized Medicine To date, much of the promise and pitfalls of personalized medicine remain untested. The
study of genetic variation has proven to be much more complex than ever imagined.
Advocates of personalized medicine have stressed its potential to:
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- Select optimal therapy and reduce "trial-and-error"
- Reduce adverse drug reactions
- Improve the selection of drug targets
- Increase patient compliance with therapy
- Reduce the time, cost, and failure rate of clinical trials
- Revive drugs that failed clinical trials in large groups
and retest in correct subgroup
- Avoid withdrawal of marketed drugs
- Shift the emphasis in medicine from reaction to
prevention and reduce the overall cost of healthcare.
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