Pharmacogenomics is transforming personalized medicine in a big way. Breakthroughs in gene-drug interactions and growing insight into genetics suggests that pharmacogenomics will transform patient care by allowing for more patient-specific treatment. In other words, pharmacogenomics makes it possible to factor a patient’s genetic information into the treatment process so that clinicians are less reliant on a trial-and-error approach to prescribing medications. It sounds quite interesting!
However, major challenges of implementation lie at the point of integration into healthcare systems, including the modification of clinical pathways and a large knowledge gap in pharmacogenomics in the healthcare workforce. There must be efficient collaboration between health care professionals and scientists because each one of them has their unique trainings and specialized expertise. Those experts may view and tackle the same problem differently, which in turn allows them to contribute to the field of genomic medicine distinctively.
For instance, a physician may not be able to understand the raw data generated by pharmacogenomic analysis. So, he/she will need assistance from an expert in that field. Thus, experts in different fields should consider collaborating and translating their work to the next individual in the health care network to avoid any misinterpretation and misunderstanding when working with patients.
There are also concerns that the potential cost of pharmacogenomic drug development may lead to genetically based treatment. The development of pharmacogenomic technologies will likely result in the development of drugs for at-risk populations.
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Article Practical Challenges and Translational Issues in Pharmacogen...
Personalized medicine is the new wave of best practice. Beginning with identifying the mutant, allows pharmacogenomics to kick start the treatment by attacking the 'parasite offender' cancer rather than the unwilling 'host' patient which will recognize the needs of each person with their unique DNA.