Here are 11 things to know about personalized medicine, according to an American Gastroenterological Association Perspectives Online report.
Advantages:
• Prediction and prevention of disease
• Early intervention
• Development of more targeted therapies
• Enhancement of physician ability to make informed decisions
• Eventual reduction of healthcare costs through more accurate diagnosis, correct medications and target therapies
Challenges
• Developing user-friendly support tools and practice guidelines
• Obtaining payer reimbursement for genomic testing
• Ethical issues surrounding routine genomic sequencing
• Reduction in cost of sequencing
• Identifying patients that would benefit from individualized care
• Generating, interpreting and storing sequencing data that can be used for clinical care
Madhusudan Grover, MD, and Gianrico Farrugia, MD, of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., collaborated on the AGA Perspectives Online report.
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