Ohio State Medical Center joins personalized medicine coalition

The Ohio State University Medical Center will partner with a Seattle group to further the growing personalized medicine movement, which tailors healthcare to individuals.

The OSU Medical Center plans to spend $1 million over two years on its partnership with the Institute for Systems Biology to create the so-called P4 Medicine Institute, which stands for predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory. The aim is to research and develop drugs and tests that diagnose, prevent or treat disease based on patients’ individual genetic risks, diet and other factors.

“By leveraging an individual’s genomic and molecular signature, P4 Medicine transitions care away from the current one-size-fits-all approach and enables highly personalized care,” said Dr. Fred Lee, the new Institute’s executive director, in a statement from OSU.

The University’s Board of Trustees voted Friday to approve the partnership with the Institute for Systems Biology.

Many in the healthcare industry expect personalization to be the future of medicine. Proponents say personalized medicine will result in a lower-cost, higher-quality and more-precise brand of medicine.

Personalized medicine is a disruptive innovation that will require new business models, according to global business consultant PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) in its The New Science of Personalized Medicine report. PWC projects the worldwide pharmaceutical, medical device and diagnostics segment of the market to be worth $24 billion and growing at 10 percent a year.