ABSTRACT
Personalized medicines or drugs prescribed on the basis of pharmacogenomic biomarkers are not in practice qualitatively different to other drugs. With lack of evidence that in many cases pharmacogenomic testing can improve patient outcomes and make a meaningful difference to clinical decision-making, uptake has been uneven in both the US and Britain not only by clinicians but also by healthcare payers. At the same time, health technology assessment (HTA) organizations and pharmaceutical companies have formed new partnerships to advance research into personalized medicine. A number of actors who championed the cause of genomic personalized medicine did so by first acknowledging that doctors have always taken a personalized approach to treating their patients. This chapter highlights how the clinical and cost effectiveness of both personalized medicines and pharmacogenomic testing remains an uncertain and contested area. Searching the scientific and medical literature for publications on personalized medicine reveals that prior to 1997 this concept had only occasional, episodic use.
