5 Influence of Personalized Medicine on Participants
Great impact of personalized medicine will be visible in the health insurance
system and stakeholders. Although personalized medicine is often referred to as
an expensive medicine, a personalized approach will eventually reduce health
insurance costs. The examples of savings are numerous, particularly those found
in stratification medicine. For example, EGFR mutation testing in France required
1.7 million€but led to the savings of 69 million€during the treatment of nonsmall
cell lung carcinoma with gefitinib. Similarly, savings of 30,000€per patient
afflicted with colon cancer bearing K-Ras mutation and tested for EGFR were
achieved in nonresponders to EGFR antagonists. There are many other similar
examples.
Initially, the costs of expensive diagnostics may rise, but in the perspective, the
savings will be evident due to more efficient prevention and early intervention,
especially in chronic patients. The costs of investment into new technologies and
infrastructure will provide cheaper and more efficient protection for future gener-
ations. Drugs inefficient in a preponderance of the population members may prove
efficient in the particular defined cohort. Although perhaps more expensive at the
beginning, health care will be ultimately cheaper for the aforementioned reasons
derived from personalized medicine.
When speaking about the influence on medical industry, it is difficult to predict
the outcome. Maybe drugs will be produced that would be efficient in the particular
defined cohort, which is useful for both the industry and patients. Clinical investi-
gations could be more accurate by selecting more adequate patient samples. New
test models will have to be developed.In silicostudies will represent an important
step forward in the development of precise clinical tests. It is likely that the
development of biotechnological and medical technology will be fostered in com-
parison with the drug industry.
Destiny of personalized medicine will depend on the ability to integrate complex
information derived from multiple sources and on the preconditions; among the
most important ones includes advanced technology (with the aim to produce and
manage data). Technological and other preconditions include, among others,
advanced high-throughput -omics technology (genomics, epigenomics, proteomics,
metabolomics, lipidomics, etc.), microbiomics, molecular imaging, physiological
monitoring, environmental exposure, lifestyle, the ICT analysis and data manage-
ment, and their conversion to useful outcome.
The following scenario is possible: collection of clinical data is ensued by
-omics analysis in one day that encompasses individual metabolic profile, protein
expression and localization, mRNA expression, epigenomic signature in specific
cell type, data integration and interpretation and prediction of individual risk and
disease course, and finally treatment response, i.e., adverse side effects.
Informatics-computational technology is an important component of personalized
medicine. So far, it has been exploited in physics for demanding experiments and
show business. In biomedicine, its application commenced with genomic era.
Personalized Medicine: The Path to New Medicine 7