Consumer Familiarity, Perspectives and Expected Value of Personalized Medicine With a Focus on Applications in Oncology

Authors and Disclosures

Susan Garfield*^,1, Michael P Douglas², Karen V MacDonald³, Deborah A Marshall³ & Kathryn A Phillips²

¹GfK, 21 Cochituate Road Wayland, MA 01778, USA
²Department of Clinical Pharmacy, Center for Translational & Policy Research on Personalized Medicine (TRANSPERS), University of California at San Francisco, 3333 California St, Room 420, Box 0613 San Francisco, CA 94143 USA
³Health Research Innovation Centre (HRIC) – 3C62, University of Calgary, 3280 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, AB T2N 4Z6, USA

*Author for correspondence
Tel.: +1 508 358 8008 susan.garfield@gfk.com

Financial & competing interests disclosure
This research was partly funded by a National Institutes of Health grant (Grant No. R01HG007063) to Kathryn Phillips. The authors are grateful for contributions from collaborators at the University of California, San Francisco, Center for Translational and Policy Research on Personalized Medicine. Deborah Marshall receives salary support via her positions as a Canada Research Chair in Health Systems and Services Research, and Arthur JE Child Chair in Rheumatology. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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Executive Summary

Understanding of personalized medicine

• Low familiarity with the term 'personalized medicine' among the general population with 73% of individuals not having heard the term.

• Once definitions for personalized medicine were provided, most respondents thought it would have a very positive impact, though there was variability in expectations of timing of impact.

Perceived likely adherence to personalized medicine recommendations

• Respondents are willing to pay $500 for a predictive or prognostic test. However, respondents have high likelihood of seeking a second opinion associated with directed care if it implies nonresponse.

• 84% of respondents may not have an immediate behavior or treatment change from a personalized medicine approach if it suggests forgoing treatment.

Perceived economic impact

• Most respondents saw the primary value of personalized medicine to be tailoring treatments and predicting whether a medication is likely to help or hurt before taking it (44%), or minimizing the impact of diseases through preventive medicine (42%), rather than predicting what disease they would get in the future (13%).

• Consumers previously diagnosed with a potentially fatal disease have different perceptions about the value of various aspects of PM than the general public.

• The type and prognosis of disease affected consumers' familiarity with and willingness-to-pay for PM treatments

Personalized medicine testing

• Consumers with private insurance or Medicare coverage displayed a greater interest in genetic tests