Personalized Medicine Coalition (PMC) - personalized medicine 101

If you have not read up yet on personalized medicine this is a great article that will go through the basics in layman's terms...there are 4 links below to each section...and the last area is the toughest...the challenges as it will all be work in progress for quite a while to come...so somebody pay the bill....BD

overview > the science > the promise > the challenges
Personalized medicine uses new methods of molecular analysis to better manage a patient’s disease or predisposition toward a disease. It aims to achieve optimal medical outcomes by helping physicians and patients choose the disease management approaches likely to work best in the context of a patient’s genetic and environmental profile. Such approaches may include genetic screening programs that more precisely diagnose diseases and their sub-types, or help physicians select the type and dose of medication best suited to a certain group of patients.
Some of the issues raised by personalized medicine include:
Intellectual property - Patent protection
Regulatory oversight - FDA regulation with guidelines and clinical trials
Reimbursement - Who gets tested for what and how to code
Privacy, confidentiality- and psychological and social effects
Pharmaceutical and biotech companies, diagnostics companies, researchers, medical educators, information technology managers, healthcare providers, laboratories, patient advocates, policymakers, payers and other stakeholders must all work together to carefully review the issues at hand and consider their interconnected implications.