Personalized Medicine

We believe that molecular medicine and personalized medicine are related but not identical.

In our view, molecular medicine is the science, the growing understanding of the molecular mechanism of disease. This deeper understanding and quantification of disease enables the specification of molecular markers which lead to diagnostics and the ability to describe disease and wellness in a significantly more precise and personal way than ever before.

We believe that the science of molecular medicine will lead to radical and significant changes in healthcare.

We are enthusiastic about personalized medicine. However, we see personalized medicine as the tangible implementation of the benefits of molecular medicine. There are many definitions of personalized medicine. Among these are:

• The traditional healthcare provided by a primary care physician who knows each of her patients and treats them as individuals
• The use of molecular diagnostics to treat cancer more effectively
• "The use of genetic susceptibility or pharmacogenetic testing to tailor an individual's preventive care or drug therapy" - Nature, glossary
• "The use of a person's clinical, genetic, genomic, and environmental information to select a medication, its dose, or to choose a therapy, or recommend preventive health measures. The goal of personalized medicine is optimize the health care and medical outcomes for each individual." Duke Institute for Genome Sciences & Policy, glossary

Since the phrase "personalized medicine" has come to have specific meaning for various individuals, and since Genomic Healthcare Strategies believes in a broader and more comprehensive definition of personalized medicine than many organizations, we use the phrase "molecular medicine" to try to avoid limiting the scope of our vision.

Our Perspective, "Impact of molecular medicine on healthcare markets and strategies for success" appearing in the September issue of the Future Science Group's Personalized Medicine journal, is a good introduction to our broad view of the changes happening in healthcare.