The promise of personalized health care is exhilarating and its development will only accelerate in the next decade. This approach to health and disease is revolutionary and will fundamentally alter the practice of medicine. The future of personalized health care is a world in which physicians and health care professionals, armed with electronic medical information and a patient’s detailed genome, prescribe treatment options based on an individual’s unique genetic characteristics while taking into account behavioral and environmental factors. It is a world in which patients take control of their own health by understanding their genetic predisposition to diseases and following proven approaches to actively prevent or postpone the onset of disease. At the same time, medications will be developed that target individual needs more precisely through understanding relevant variations in a patient’s genome, an approach that will also minimize genetic-based adverse effects.
To realize the full potential of personalized health care, scientists are now working on a wide range of related biomedical research projects. According to the National Institute of Health’s Roadmap for Medical Research, new pathways to discovery include the scientific exploration of the five “omics” (genomics, proteomics, lipidomics, metabolomics and cytomics) as well as molecular imaging, structural biology, bioinformatics, computational biology and nanomedicine.
The Ohio State University’s Center for Personalized Health Care (CPHC) is facilitating initiatives that will promote PHC along the academic spectrum of education, research and individual health and patient care. PHC research at OSU currently includes basic and translational studies in human cancer genetics, advanced lung disease and sepsis, wound healing, women’s health, pharmacogenomics, diabetes and biomedical informatics. The CPHC is also working with OSU’s faculty and staff managed care program to promote active participation of individuals in their own “personalized” health maintenance. Furthermore, it seeks to nationally advance these initiatives through a collaborative network with other academic medical centers and research organizations. In 2007, The OSU CPHC and the Emory Predictive Health Institute entered into just such an affiliation, the Alliance for Predictive and Personalized Health.
Personalized health care is personalized, predictive, preventive and participatory. It is nothing less than a revolution in wellness and disease treatment.
Daniel Sedmak, MD
Executive Director, Center for Personalized Health Care
Senior Associate Vice President for Health Sciences
View Dr. Sedmak's presentation on Personalized Health Care.