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A survey conducted in 2013 by GfK Bridgehead, an international market research
fi rm, aimed to gauge consumer perspectives on personalized medicine. The surprising
fi nding was that only just more than a quarter of people have heard of the term ‘person-
alized medicine’. Additionally, many people think that such tailored treatments will
lead to a rise in healthcare costs, which was the main thing they wanted to learn about
personalized medicine. Of those that knew the term ‘personalized medicine,’ only a
handful could describe it correctly; 4 % said it dealt with medicine based upon a
patient’s genetic or genomic makeup. About half of the respondents, though, were inter-
ested in genetic testing, particularly those with past cancer diagnoses (~80 %). Those
who were interested were materially different than those who were not as follows:
- On average, those who were interested were more educated, had better health,
and saw the value of personalized medicine impacting disease prevention - In contrast, those who were not interested in genetic testing were less comfort-
able with handling genetic data, visited doctors less frequently, and saw the value
of personalized medicine playing out once a disease is diagnosed.
A study has shown that pharmacogenetic testing may serve as another tool to
boost patients’ confi dence in the safety and effi cacy of prescribed medications
(Haga and LaPointe 2013 ). It has a positive impact on medication-taking behavior
and reduces non-compliance which is well-known in patients with chronic condi-
tions, and is associated with signifi cant morbidity, mortality and health-care costs.
Role of Genetic Banking Systems and Databases
Genetic databases will be an important source of information for development of
personalized medicine. Most of these are covered under the term “biobanks”.
Role of Biobanks in Development of Personalized Medicine
A biobank is any collection of biological samples and associated clinical data. There
are biobanks for diagnostics as well as therapeutics. With the advent of genomic era,
the traditional purpose of a biobanks, such as blood bank is for storage and distribu-
tion of blood, has not been expended to include research into specifi c populations or
specifi c diseases. These facilities are important for the development of personalized
medicine. However, serious ethical issues have been raised about biobanks and con-
siderable work will be required to resolve the concerns about privacy and consent.
UK Biobank
The UK Biobank project is the largest resource for the study of the role of nature
and nurture in health and disease. The project is funded by the Medical Research
Council of UK, the Wellcome Trust biomedical research charity, the Department of
20 Development of Personalized Medicine