Personalized Medicine Perspectives and Policies in European Nordic Countries

Abstract

The technical revolution has generated large numbers of data in healthcare and biomedical research. Thus, research and innovation became a growing priority to support a change from the one-size-fits-all paradigm of healthcare to Personalized medicine, also called precision medicine. This important pillar in realizing innovation priority in healthcare - Personalized Medicine started its moving fast forward all over the word for the last decade. The aims of PM are to solve health problems by enabling early, individualized diagnosis and treatment, using characterization of individuals’ phenotypes and genotypes. The Nordic region, comprising primarily Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, has many of the necessary characteristics for being at the forefront of genome-based Personalized Medicine development and implementation into clinical care. Remarkably, Nordic countries were the first European countries that started developing Biobank and legislation in this direction. The Joint Committee of the Nordic Medical Research Councils is a cooperative body responsible for the medical research councils of the Nordic countries, which has straightened strategies towards personalized medicine since 2011 and reaching very good result in implementation of this concept, before other European countries. All Nordic countries directed national strategies either specifically towards personalized medicine or to closely related areas, advancing infrastructure development. The most important pitfall in this region is the reliable genetic basis, which started its evolution in early 90-th by implementation of Genome Projects. Nowadays, Nordic countries show perfect example of Personalized Medicine implementation and continuous development, overcoming hurdles and setting ambitious goals.