Academic Review 2024

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To what extent does personalised medicine have the potential to be further integrated into the NHS and how effectively is it currently being used? By Kourosh Jaafari Since as early as the 1950s, scientists have been working on developing personalised medicine. Unfortunately, due to limited technology, the idea of mapping a human genome was only a distant dream and the time and cost of genome mapping made moving to a healthcare system which incorporates personalised medicine unimaginable. However, thanks to rapid technological advancements and incredible evolution in the field of medical sciences over the last few decades, mapping parts of the human genome to create personalised treatments is now a much more plausible and widely used method of improving healthcare not only in the NHS, but all around the world.

Introduction

treatments comes with a multitude of shortcomings, because a whole range of factors such as genetics can greatly influence the efficiency of a treatment. Therefore, ‘The traditional one-size fits-all approach to disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment, which has proved to be inefficient, expensive, and sometimes even hazardous, is expected to be progressively replaced by a more individualized and tailor-made approach’ (Budin-Ljøsne & Harris, 2015).

The NHS defines personalised medicine as, ‘a move away from a “one size fits all” approach to the treatment and care of patients with a particular condition, to one which uses new approaches to better manage patients’ health and target therapies to achieve the best outcomes in the management of a patient’s disease or predisposition to disease’ (England, NHS, 2016). The use of a “One size fits all” approach in which individuals with the same disease or illness are all provided with identical