What is Precision Medicine?
Precision Medicine is an emerging medical field that incorporates a patient’s clinical information into a predictive model to better determine individual responsiveness to treatment and outcomes. This model can then be used to inform clinical practice, helping clinical teams to offer their patients optimal, personalized treatment, and sparing patients from the side effects of targeted therapies from which they may not benefit.
Precision Medicine at Penn
Precision Medicine is a key component of medical diagnosis and treatment at Penn Medicine. In 2016, David B. Roth, MD, PhD was appointed Director of the Penn Center for Precision Medicine (PCPM) to accelerate the implementation of precision medicine into clinical care and routine health system operations at Penn. An analytics team also captures data on both medical and economic outcomes to measure impact of these endeavors.
In keeping with this mission, Dr. Roth played a key role in the development of a funding initiative for research in precision medicine at Penn, the Precision Medicine Accelerator Fund Projects. In 2017, the Fund awarded grants for personalized medicine projects at Penn Medicine in cardiology, radiology, pathology, psychiatry, oncology, dermatology and translational medicine.
In 2018, accelerator projects included opioid dosage requirements, radiology, algorithmic decision making for AML, autoimmune diseases, cardiology, advanced pancreatic cancer, automated screening mechanisms and chemogenomics.
Dr. Roth is an internationally recognized expert in genetics and DNA repair, and serves as Simon Flexner Professor and Chair, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
#NextGenMed: Precision Medicine webinar
On Tuesday, March 27, Dr. Roth participated in a free, online physician conference, #NextGenMed: Precision Medicine — presented in partnership with the Institute on Science for Global Policy’s The Forum, the Penn Center for Precision Medicine, and medical student interest groups at Drexel University College of Medicine and Temple University School of Medicine. The virtual learning program included interviews, panels and a podcast, and was streamed via Facebook Live.
Additional Precision Medicine resources