Applying Personalized Medicine in the Overall Healthcare Environment

Lyudmila Bazhenova, MD

Uncategorized

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the second year of publication of Personalized Medicine in Oncology (PMO)! We launched this journal with the goal of providing the practicing oncologist with a translational guide to personalized medicine’s research advances and system improvements that bring targeted treatment into practice, thereby transforming personalized medicine from a dream to a reality. In the coming year, we will continue to strive toward this goal and believe that PMO has a unique role in fostering clinical acumen for its readers.

The advances involving personalized medicine challenge the practicing oncologist’s knowledge of their value-based usage. The pace of research is demanding this value-based translational guidance, for healthcare cannot tolerate miscalculations in the use of expensive treatments and diagnostics. Faced with a deluge of data regarding personalized medicine products and techniques, the practicing oncologist needs help in the organization of resources. While the media tend to alternately overstate and complicate the degree to which personalized medicine is driving cancer treatment, PMO provides both the practical information and perspective that clinicians need to identify the advances that bring value – cost, quality, and access advantages – to their practice of medicine. Our editorial clarifies the broad spectrum of personalized medicine techniques and resources; whether they offer improved outcomes or just parity; their impact on costs, manpower, and systems; securing payer coverage; or their implications on health-related quality of life.

Our Editorial Board appreciates that new technologies do not “run themselves,” and so we invite editorial that cultivates the requisite clinical expertise to use them well. Treatments and diagnostics will rise no higher than the acumen of the oncologists using them. Our editorial therefore focuses on the clinical relevance of new biomarkers and the potent alternatives that achieve the goal of an enriched patient population.
Thank you for your readership. The Editorial Board looks forward to serving you well in this New Year to help you implement this remarkable new process of care.

Sincerely,

Lyudmila Bazhenova, MD
University of California, San Diego
PMO Editorial Board Member

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