629data and participate in integrating medical genomic information into clinical practice.
Professional organizations such as the American Medical Association (AMA) have
an important role.
The American Medical Association and Personalized Medicine
The AMA oversees medical nomenclature critical to any fi eld of medicine as it
enters the marketplace. The AMA would be involved with personalized medicine
through its Current Procedural Terminology codes. CPT codes are the most widely
accepted medical nomenclature used to report medical procedures and services
under public and private health insurance programs. CPT is maintained by the CPT
Editorial Panel, which meets three times a year to discuss issues associated with
new and emerging technologies as well as diffi culties encountered with procedures
and services and their relation to CPT codes.
Medical Education
As knowledge in molecular genetics and cell biology accelerates, the biomedical
community is fi nding it increasingly hard to harness the explosion of new informa-
tion and translate it into medical practice. Biomedical scientists should be trained to
apply new biological knowledge to human health. A better understanding of medi-
cine also can guide scientists in research directions that are most likely to benefi t the
diagnosis and treatment of human disease.
There is a growing need to incorporate the increasing body of knowledge of
pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics in the standard curriculum of medical
schools, so that the next generation of clinicians and researchers will be familiar
with the latest developments in these areas, and will be capable of providing patients
with the expected benefi ts of personalized medicine. As a fi rst step, and in recogni-
tion of such emergent needs, the graduate school of the Sackler Faculty of Medicine
at the Tel-Aviv University in Israel introduced a course in 2002 titled ‘Introduction
to Pharmacogenomics: Towards Personalized Medicine’ for graduate and under-
graduate students with a basic background in pharmacology and human genetics.
As personalized medicine is being developed by the pharmaceutical industry,
there should be a parallel education of the public and physicians on these issues. The
present generation of physicians does not have any formal education in molecular
medicine and this can be remedied by continuing education. This can be accom-
plished by conferences and symposia sponsored by the industry. For the busy physi-
cian who is unable to attend such conferences, the Internet educational programs
offer an alternative. Extra courses need to be incorporated in the medical curricula
and the pharmaceutical industry may invest in endowing chairs and supporting
courses on clinical pharmacology that include pharmacogenetics, pharmacogenomics
and personalized medicine. The ethical objection to involvement of pharmaceutical
Role of the Medical Profession