Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Personalized Medicine. Coming To A Hospital Near You!


The Houston Business Journal today reports on a ground breaking ceremony for Baylor College of Medicine.
"The soon-to-be Baylor Clinic and Hospital will be constructed at Old Spanish Trail and Cambridge Street in the Texas Medical Center area.

The campus will include an adult hospital, outpatient clinics, faculty offices and research space. The fully integrated health care facility, which will focus on personalized, gene-based medicine, will be open for business in 2010.
The Houston-based school also said its "Best Minds, Best Medicine" fundraising campaign is nearly half way to its $1 billion goal for clinical, research and education projects."
Baylor is best known in genetics circle as the place you send your CMA/CGHs. Personally, this is a great accomplishment. They now join the ranks of TGen, Mount Sinai, Duke, Mayo, Michigan State and Harvard in planning and implementing "Personalized Medicine Departments/Hospitals"
The problem I see is: Whom will talk with the primary care physicians in a language they can understand? Surely these patients will get genetic guided therapies and hopefully get some excellent counseling, but will the PMD have the knowledge to understand what was done? What about the patient. Will there be an educational program directed at clinic physicians? Where do non-clinic patients get their care? Will the summary reports be at a level the PMD can digest?
The Gene Sherpa Says: All this planning is great, but can we have something Right NOW?

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