Harvard Personalized Medicine Conference

At a two-day conference on Personalized Medicine hosted by Harvard Partners Center for Genetics and Genomics, three main themes were discussed:

1. Personalized medicine incorporating genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, medical technologies and informatics will “propel the wave of the second medical revolution.”

“Personalized medicine is not just for cancer,” said Mara Aspinall, president of Genzyme Genetics. Antibiotic resistance contributes to $4 billion in excess avoidable healthcare costs each year. Tests that are available for diabetes and heart disease could save more than $600 million a year. But there is an additional fear – a fear among physicians of understanding new genetic diagnostic tests that must be overcome with “a broad educational effort, starting at medical schools.”

2. Integrating data and IT infrastructures is essential for personalized care. Aggregating medical data can be used to predict disease risk.

3. Healthcare professionals are not being educated and are ill-prepared to take advantage of the genomic revolution.

Bruce Korf (University of Alabama, Birmingham) drummed home the medical education crisis. Fewer than 40 percent of medical schools run a genetics course, he said, and according to a recent survey, only one-third of physicians polled feel trained or competent to discuss genetic information. Medical informatics is a disruptive technology akin to a Tower of Babel. “Why can’t [Google] crawl through medical records?” Korf posed. “Is Wal-Mart – Google the future of medicine?”

Pointer from The Personal Genome.

Technorati Tags: personalized+medicine, health, genetics, genomics, bioinformatics