Scant Intersection Between Patient-Centered Outcomes Research And Personalized Medicine’s Needs

Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, created quite a stir at the 7th AnnualPersonalized Medicine Conference in Boston last November. Claiming to be new to the issues around personalized medicine, he nonetheless proceeded to criticize it during his keynote address: for its rhetoric (personalized medicine is just targeted medicine, and medicine has been targeting for more than 150 years) and for its failure thus far to make a case for system cost savings. As with much new medical technology, real personalized medicine, he said, is unlikely to shrink costs and much more likely to increase costs – substantially.

That first point is debatable, but does suggest the challenge of adoption. Physicians often balk at any suggestion of being told how to practice medicine: the reluctance to accept testing for warfarin sensitivity using molecular diagnostics has been testament to that, as is the general distaste for guidelines