Personalised Medicine and Public Health

Abstract

The relationship between personalised medicine and public health can be observed from three different standpoints, offering a framework for deliberation on the individual vs. social, i.e. personal/private vs. public, as follows: personalised medicine in public health, personalised medicine vs. public health and personalised medicine and public health. Analysis brings us to the third concept as the most suitable framework for the place and role of personalised medicine within the entire health care system. Namely, personalised medicine has the potential to embrace a proactive, preemptive, participative and preventive approach to the health and well-being of all citizens. This calls for a new taxonomy of health and disease and a redefinition of health care, which now has to be understood more as a process than as a system. At the centre of this new paradigm is an individual who has to be empowered to manage one’s own health and disease. The health literacy initiative plays the key role in this inclusiveness. This potential of personalised approach to the entire health care can be highlighted through the concept of proactive P4 medicine (predictive, preventive, personalised and participatory), where public health initiatives become participatory health initiatives, based on the inclusiveness of participatory biocitizens, taking action in participatory health communities.