data processing and interpretation. It is necessary to integrate imaging technology
with real-time monitoring of health status and treatment efficiency. The processing
period should be shortened while maintaining preciseness. Advancement in this
area will be crucial for the complete integration of personalized medicine into
clinics. This will largely depend on the availability of nanodevices and nanotools.
It is important to identify which technologies could be realistically employed in
clinics. One must validate technology and gain insight into its reproducibility for
technological procedures, data collection, and manipulation. Quality assurance
protocols for laboratories have to be developed and made available at all levels.
Harmonization represents a decent basis for data management and obtaining real-
istic databases that can be used later. The current problem is that more data are
collected than can be processed or even stored.^17
One option includes the application ofin silicomodels that use only variable
data, which represents a significant reduction in the volume of invariable data to be
stored. In the next 20 years, the implementation of integrated models follows: the
need for systematic, longitudinal data collection, then setting rigid standards for
data collection, processing, and recording. Harmonization and establishment of a
framework for data disposal will be the key to success of personalized medicine.
One could also expect the establishment of electronic data and personalized
medicine portals like the existing PatienstLikeMe and Quantified Self.
PatientsLikeMe is an electronic source of clinical and scientific data, i.e., electronic
platform generated with the aim to help affected subjects to share and learn from
real-world, outcome-based health data. This includes information on symptoms,
quality of life, treatment options, specific disease variables, and other factors.
Quantified Self is a platform for citizens who collect their own data on their
lifestyle, eating habits, physical activities, physiological variables, and emotional
condition. The usefulness of such data for personalized medicine is generation of
data on profitability and monitoring of long-term effects of personalized
interventions.
8 Personalized Preventive Medicine and Diet
One of the major goals of personalized medicine is setting up efficient disease
prevention. Preventive medicine implies disease discovery before symptoms appear
or detection of disease susceptibility with the aim to prevent. It will be important to
integrate novel genetic information on epidemiologic studies so as to reveal the
causal relation between lifestyle and genetic factors in order to assess the risk of
disease. An illustrative example is given by atherosclerosis: arachidonic acid
(polyunsaturated n-6 fatty acids) in the presence of enzyme 5-lipoxygenase gives
rise to inflammatory mediators leukotrienes. Variants of 5-lipoxygenase genotype
(^17) Bosˇnjak et al. ( 2008 ) and Kraljevic ́and Pavelic ́( 2005 ).
Personalized Medicine: The Path to New Medicine 11