What is personalised medicine?
In medicine, the development and application of therapies with maximum efficacy and minimal side effects remains a fundamental challenge. In fact, approved therapies and medications often only show good efficacy in a small proportion of patients, while other patients experience no improvement or even develop severe and sometimes dangerous side effects. For several years now, the buzzword ‘individualised medicine’ (often also referred to as personalised medicine or precision medicine) has been the subject of lively debate in research, clinical practice, industry and health policy.
In individualised medicine, treatment is preceded by diagnostic tests, the results of which are intended to enable therapy or prevention tailored precisely to the patient and their clinical picture. This not only increases efficacy and safety for the individual patient, but also avoids unnecessary costs.
