Advantages And Disadvantages Of Personalised Medicine

For a lot of illnesses such as a cold or an upset stomach, most people would take a general medication like painkillers or a general decongestant for clearing a blocked nose as a “one size fits all”. Personalised medication is defined by the European Commission as “a medical model using molecular profiling for tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time, and/or to determine the predisposition to disease and/or to deliver timely and targeted prevention.” (Personalised Medicine Coalition, 2014) (Directorate General for Health and Consumers; Directorate General for Research and Innovation, 2013). Personalised medicine was accepted quickly and a dedicated journal, “Journal of Evidence Based Medicine” was launched

For one, it costs a lot of money for the research and equipment needed for the diagnostics (Jakka & Rossbach, 2013). Patients may also hear about an amazing and innovative treatment in the media and that they would then hear would not apply to them because of their genetic makeup which could lead to a breakdown in communication between the patient and the doctor (Cuticaaa, et al., 2014). There is also a privacy issue in that the patient’s genomic profile may be stored on a database for research uses and some patients may not want their DNA profile for anyone to see if it’s not for the purpose of their own treatment (Caplan, 2016). Patients may also find out things they would not want to. For example, if comparing the genetic profiles of family members to see if a disease is passed down through family it could be found that a parent is not the blood-relative of their child which would most likely lead to an angry patient. However, this could be an advantage as the profile could reveal that a patient might be at a greater risk of a disease which has not shown any symptoms yet and measures could be taken in order to reduce the risk factors (Caplan, 2016). Any doctors who would like to suggest a personalised therapy to a patient would have to be trained and educated on what their medicine is and how it works so they are able to give as much information as they can to their patient (Najafzadeh, et al.,

Doctors in training should be educated on personalised therapy as soon as possible so new discoveries and methods can be put into the public as quickly as possible. As was seen with the human genome project it took 13 years (1990 to 2003) to complete and cost 2.3 billion dollars (NHGRI, 2010). Nowadays, companies are offering to sequence anyone’s genome for just under a thousand dollars and takes about 8-10 weeks upon receiving a DNA sample (Front Line Genomics, 2016). With how easy and affordable personalised medicine is becoming I think that in the near future it will be the most common method of curing out most diseases and maybe even find ways of preventing them from even happening due to the patient’s knowledge of their risk