ELSIP: Integrating personalized medicine into clinical practice

Lynn G. Dressler Dr. P.H. Director, Personalized Medicine and Pharmacogenomics, Mission Health, Fullerton Genetics Center will present: Addressing the Ethical, Legal, Social and Policy Issues Related to Integrating Personalized Medicine into Routine Clinical Care at the 5^th Annual Personalized Medicine Conference (www.personalized-medicine-conference.com) in Boston, MA on October 21- 22, 2013.

Ten years after the completion of the Human Genome Project, there is now incredible opportunity to apply the knowledge and technology from this effort directly into clinical practice. Pharmacogenetics has been considered one of the most promising areas to truly translate this knowledge into clinical care, and if implemented appropriately, could clear the path for the expansion of individualized genomic medicine to optimize health care.

Provision of personalized medicine, and the infrastructure necessary to support its success, requires careful consideration of relevant ethical, legal, social and policy issues (ELSIP). These issues can act as barriers or facilitators to successful integration of genomic information into clinical practice.

Some of the issues to consider are:

• Who benefits from and has access to personalized medicine?
• Are we disseminating accurate information and educating stakeholders, including the public?
• Do best practices exist to assess levels of evidence for different stakeholders?
• Who should have access to genomic data and how should this be shared?

These questions can also serve to drive policy to support its implementation.