Personalized medicine—targeting treatments based on patients’ genetic profiles, environments and lifestyles—offers promising ways for physicians to better understand and treat individual patients’ health. The potential for innovation is here, but this type of medicine brings many questions as well. Learn more about top issues in personalized medicine at a special conference at Harvard Medical School.
The 11th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference, Nov. 18-19, is co-hosted and presented by Partners HealthCare Personalized Medicine, Harvard Business School and Harvard Medical School, in association with the AMA, American Association for Cancer Research, American Society for Human Genetics and Personalized Medicine Coalition.
The White House announced its commitment to personalized medicine innovation in January with the launch of the president’s Precision Medicine Initiative. The initiative will allocate funds to the National Institutes of Health for the development of a national research cohort of at least 1 million volunteers to propel understanding of health and disease through genomics.
It also will include funds for the National Cancer Institute to scale up efforts to identify genomic drivers in cancer. Similarly, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will acquire additional expertise and advance the development of curated databases to support regulations in precision medicine. The Office of the National Coordinator also will receive funds to support interoperability standards and exchange of data across systems.
In the meantime, the AMA is working on a few fronts to push forward personalized medicine:
- Medical schools that are part of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education are taking on personalized medicine for future physicians. The University of Michigan School of Medicine’s groundbreaking personalized medicine program in prostate cancer screening and treatment is just one example. The University of California—San Francisco also is involved in numerous personalized medicine projects, from breast cancer screenings to treatment for HIV/AIDS. Finally, Mayo Clinic’s Center for Individualized Medicine is incorporating personalized medicine education into Mayo Medical School. A session at the ChangeMedEd 2015 conference will cover how medical education is incorporating the broader social, ethical and legal challenge associated with the application of personalized medicine.
- The FDA last year proposed a risk-based, phased-in approach to regulating laboratory-developed tests—services and procedures that represent the majority of advanced laboratory tests used in patient care. The AMA is working with a coalition of physician and laboratory medicine provider groups to develop an alternative proposal that would more effectively promote medical innovation and preserve patient access to genetic and genomic testing. Read more about this issue at AMA Wire®.
- Coverage, coding and pricing of genetic and genomic tests will continue to be an important issue. As the field grows and more personalized medicine technologies become available, the AMA is working to provide options to physicians, researchers and payers, who may be seeking more detailed identification about such technologies.
The AMA also continues to advocate for appropriate coding and coverage for precision medicine testing by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and private payers. The AMA is working to establish initiatives that will support the clinical integration of genetic and genomic testing as well.
