Clinical Adoption of Personalized Medicine: Progress and Lessons Learned in the United States and Europe
In a 2021 article published in the Journal of Personalized Medicine, researchers from the Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) and Health Advances summarized the results of a multi-factorial survey measuring progress toward the clinical integration of personalized medicine within a geographically diverse sample of 153 United States-based health care providers.
The results showed that many administrators and practitioners are working to integrate the tests and treatments underpinning personalized medicine into their clinical practices, with 83 percent of the institutions studied scoring a two or higher on the five-point scale used to examine their integration efforts. The findings underline personalized medicine’s evolution from a promising concept introduced following the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003 to a practical reality today.
But the developers of precision diagnostics and therapies cannot assume that every provider institution trying to implement personalized medicine will be successful in bringing the benefits of the approach to every patient who may benefit from it.
Take non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), for example. NSCLC presents major opportunities for a personalized approach, with more than 70 percent of NSCLC tumors having biomarker alterations that indicate potential responders to targeted treatment strategies.
Yet, the findings of a PMC/Diaceutics analysis published in 2022 showed that due to the complexities involved in genetic and genomic testing and biomarker-based prescribing, personalized medicines reached only 36 percent of the 38,068 newly diagnosed advanced NSCLC patients who were included in the study cohort. The practice gaps identified in this article underscore that the training, technologies, and public policy infrastructure needed to implement high-quality health care in the era of personalized medicine differ substantially in comparison to what was needed during decades characterized by less sophisticated approaches.
“Given the practice gaps revealed [in NSCLC], one can only imagine what the picture of clinical adoption looks like in disease states where personalized medicine is even less established, even though it is equally promising for patients and their families,” the study authors wrote in an op-ed published October 31 in The Boston Globe‘s health care affiliate, STAT.
Thus, the stage is set for a 2023 Annual Personalized Medicine Conference panel discussion on the Clinical Adoption of Personalized Medicine that has taken on added significance in the wake of the 2022 study findings.
During this discussion, researchers, business leaders, and clinicians who are intimately involved in the clinical integration of personalized medicine will discuss what can be done to close the gap between what is possible and what is practiced in modern medicine.
The discussion promises to help inform policymakers, industry advocates, and business leaders about the additional steps they can take to support the medical professionals who are working to bring the benefits of personalized medicine to more patients.
PMC Board Member Howard McLeod, Pharm.D., who serves as the Managing Director of Clarified Precision Medicine, will moderate the conversation.
