Personalized medicine--a tailored health care system: challenges and opportunities

The vision of the future health care should be a system in which patient care is consistently improved through the use of information on the individual patient's genomes and their downstream products. This requires the exploration of strategic relationships among various disciplines such as life sciences, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and information and communication technology, and constellation thinking to propose new ways for the diagnosis and therapy of diseases, integrated with a planned trans-disciplinary scientific approach involving all interested parties. Connecting high-quality trans-disciplinary scientists on a pan-European level through programs such as the Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) can support capacity building and increase the impact of personalized medicine research on regulatory bodies, decision makers, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and the paying public. Such group effort could enable breakthrough scientific developments leading to new concepts and products and thereby contributing to the strengthening of Europe's research and innovation capacity while reforming the health care system.