Improving the Quality of 'Personalized Medicine' Research and Practice

Authors and Disclosures

George P Browman*^,1,2, Jochen Vollmann³, Alice Virani⁴ & Jan Schildmann⁵

¹British Columbia Cancer Agency, Vancouver Island Centre, Canada
²The School of Population & Public Health, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
³Institute for Medical Ethics & History of Medicine, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
⁴Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia BC Children's & Women's Hospitals, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
⁵Institute for Medical Ethics & History of Medicine, Ruhr-University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

*Author for correspondence
Tel.: +1 250 370 1373; +1 250 519 2025; gbrowman@yahoo.com

Sidebar

The feasibility of a personalized medicine system – ethics & fair marketing of the vision

• Examines whether the marketing message of personalized medicine is overambitious thus misrepresenting the scope and outcomes of what p-m can achieve, or a realistic, feasible vision for the future of medicine

• Explores the implications of the vision of personalized medicine as an integrated system with regards to the collaboration of individuals and institutions from the private and public domains, and how a systems approach affects how we judge the quality of personalized medicine research and care

• Argues that these partnership arrangements will need to be carefully negotiated to avoid real and perceived conflicts of interest.

Ethics, quality & methodological standards in personalized medicine

• Reviews arguments in the current debate for and against the departure from traditional evidence based evaluation models and new ethical frameworks including informed consent options.

• Casts a new light on the idea of genetic exceptionalism to explore how novel approaches to ethical concerns raised by PM can have implications for improved quality in other areas of healthcare.