Personalised Medicine and Public Health
Vladimir Mic ́ovic ́, Iva Sorta-Bilajac Turina, and Ðulija Malatestinic ́
Abstract The relationship between personalised medicine and public health can be
observed from three different standpoints, offering a framework for deliberation on
the individual vs. social, i.e. personal/private vs. public, as follows: personalised
medicineinpublic health, personalised medicinevs.public health and personalised
medicineandpublic health. Analysis brings us to the third concept as the most
suitable framework for the place and role of personalised medicine within the entire
health care system. Namely, personalised medicine has the potential to embrace a
proactive, preemptive, participative and preventive approach to the health and well-
being of all citizens. This calls for a new taxonomy of health and disease and a
redefinition of health care, which now has to be understood more as a process than
as a system. At the centre of this new paradigm is an individual who has to be
empowered to manage one’s own health and disease. The health literacy initiative
plays the key role in this inclusiveness. This potential of personalised approach to
the entire health care can be highlighted through the concept of proactive P4
medicine (predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory), where public
health initiatives become participatory health initiatives, based on the inclusiveness
of participatory biocitizens, taking action in participatory health communities.
Professor Vladimir Mic ́ovic ́, M.D., Ph.D., Head of Teaching Institute of Public Health of
Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia.
Professor Iva Sorta Bilajac, M.D., Ph.D., Teaching Institute of Public Health of Primorje-Gorski
Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia.
Professor Ðulija Malatestinic ́M.D., Ph.D., Head of Department of Health, Primorje-Gorski
Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia.
V. Mic ́ovic ́, M.D., Ph.D. • I.S.-B. Turina, M.D., Ph.D. (*)
Teaching Institute of Public Health, Primorje - Gorski Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia
University of Rijeka School of Medicine, Rijeka, Croatia
e-mail:[email protected];[email protected];[email protected]
Ð. Malatestinic ́, M.D., Ph.D.
Teaching Institute of Public Health, Primorje - Gorski Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia
University of Rijeka School of Medicine, Rijeka, Croatia
Department of Health, Primorje - Gorski Kotar County, Rijeka, Croatia
e-mail:[email protected]
©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_5
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