- Health in Code sponsors the conference “Genotipia Horizon: Towards Personalized Precision Medicine” organized by Genotipia
- The event brought together in Valencia professionals from the La Fe hospitals in Valencia, the San Carlos Clinic in Madrid and the Health Research Institute in Santiago.
Anticipate the appearance of a disease or be able to individually direct and personalize treatments for different pathologies: this is how genetic medicine and precision medicine work. A discipline, still quite unknown, that analyzes the genomics of each person, as well as the molecular characteristics of each disease in order to offer the best care to patients.
With the intention of evaluating its current implementation in our health system and the future perspectives offered by its application, the company Genotipia, a reference in training and informative content in genetics and genomics, has celebrated, on the occasion of its tenth anniversary, the “ Genotyping Horizon: Towards Personalized Precision Medicine. Mariola Penadés, General Director of Research and Innovation of the Ministry of Health of the Valencian Community, participated in it; María Brion, Coordinator of the Cardiovascular Genetics Unit of the Santiago Health Research Institute (IDIS) and the Xenoma Galicia project; María José Herrero Researcher in the Pharmacogenetics group at the La Fe University and Polytechnic Hospital in Valencia; Amparo Tolosa, Scientific Director of Genotipia; Pedro Pérez Segura, Head of the Medical Oncology Service at the San Carlos Clinical Hospital in Madrid and Inés Calabria, head of the Oncology area at Health in Code.
All experts have agreed that preventive medicine in which the appearance of diseases is anticipated, measures are taken for their prevention and specific treatments adapted to the molecular characteristics of each disease and the genetics of each patient are not only a savings for the patient themselves and an improvement in their quality of life but also savings for the health system.
Researcher María José Herrero pointed out that “Lately there are many working groups with the focus precisely on demonstrating this savings at an economic level, in addition to the improvement in the lives of patients in the real contexts of pluripathology and polypharmacy.”
And although the equipment, resources and training necessary to implement precision medicine in real practice require a high investment, a genetic study can save, for example, the performance of a biopsy, so that in the end the expense in a surgical intervention, which also involves the admission of the patient.
For her part, María Brion has assured that “Genomic medicine is already a reality that has changed the approach to rare diseases, cancer or pharmacogenetics, guiding the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment of diseases. Previous studies have shown that the implementation of personalized medicine through clinical genomics, among other advantages, improves patient survival, reduces adverse events after treatment, the cost of health care, hospitalization periods and/or or the cost of carrying out clinical trials.”
The indirect costs of not doing a genetic study
In many cases, genetic study makes it possible to reduce hospital pharmacy spending by better selecting patients who can benefit from personalized treatment. In this sense, Pedro Pérez has assured that “with the investment of an initial study that allows us to select a specific drug for the pathology, we save a lot of money on ineffective treatments and avoid playing with the patient’s lifespan.”
Furthermore, it is important to analyze the direct expenses in addition to the indirect ones in addressing the disease, for example: costs of inefficient treatments, generation of side effects, avoiding chronic diseases, avoiding toxicities, avoiding interventions, both surgical and other types, etc. .
In this scenario, the training of professionals represents an essential element. “To fully benefit from genetics and precision medicine, it is essential that our healthcare professionals are properly trained in these disciplines. It is useless to have the most advanced equipment if we do not know when to use it and how to take advantage of it,” concludes the CEO and Co-Founder of Genotipia.
If you liked this news and want to learn more about Genetics in Medicine, you are interested in our courses and university training, such as the “Master in Precision Medicine and Clinical Genetics” as well as our audiovisual channel, Genotipia TV.
