Personalized Medicine: The Path to New
Medicine
Kresˇimir Pavelic ́, Sandra Kraljevic ́Pavelic ́, and Mirela Sedic ́
Abstract Personalised medicine is a new paradigm that represents a shift from
current simplified consideration of the patient as a member of the population
sharing common fate of disease towards the view that each patient is a unique
individual. Every person has specific genomic/proteomic and metabolic signature
that could account for specific clinical features of disease, response to treatment and
disease severity. Therefore, disease and the treatment itself should be considered
individually. Due to a number of reasons for introduction of new paradigm in
medicine, implementation of personalised medicine is envisaged in several con-
secutive steps where projections of the levels of technology, medicine and integra-
tion need to be coordinated.
1 Introduction
Modern medicine faces great challenges, including rapid social changes resulting
from globalization, emerging new infectious diseases that spread quickly, alter-
ations in clinical patterns of some diseases (e.g., drug-resistant tuberculosis),
and abrupt climate and demographic changes (i.e., aging). These are only some
of the issues that traditional medicine is likely to cope with great difficulties.
Professor Kresˇimir Pavelic ́, M.D. Ph.D., Head of Laboratory for High-Throughput Analytics,
University Centre for High-Throughput Technologies, Department of Biotechnology, University
of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia.
Professor Sandra Kraljevic ́ Pavelic ́, Ph.D., University Centre for High-Throughput
Technologies, Department of Biotechnology, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia.
Assistant Professor Mirela Sedic ́, Ph.D., University Centre for High-Throughput Technologies,
Department of Biotechnology, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia.
K. Pavelic ́, M.D., Ph.D. (*)
Laboratory for High-Throughput Analytics, Department of Biotechnology, University Centre
for High-Throughput Technologies, University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
e-mail:[email protected]
S. Kraljevic ́Pavelic ́, Ph.D. • M. Sedic ́, Ph.D.
Department of Biotechnology, University Centre for High-Throughput Technologies,
University of Rijeka, Rijeka, Croatia
©Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016
N. Bodiroga-Vukobrat et al. (eds.),Personalized Medicine,Europeanization and
Globalization 2, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-39349-0_
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