Husna Rahim, PharmD & Zachary S Brooks, PhD
Integration of Pharmacogenomics in Clinical Practice. How soon can personalized medicine be part of mainstay healthcare? The evolution of PGx, or the study of how genes affect a person’s response to drugs, has advanced to the extent that its integration into routine health care is no longer a question of if, but when. To determine the answer, one must consider existing barriers, including lack of PGx testing standardization, high costs, and limited training among healthcare professionals.
PGx testing & electronic health records. Lack of standardization in terminologies and data structures make it difficult to incorporate PGx testing recommendations into electronic health records (EHRs). This can lead to confusion and misunderstanding among healthcare providers, potentially resulting in inappropriate prescribing decisions. To tackle this obstacle, it is necessary to develop, validate, and disseminate standardized evidence-based guidelines for the implementation of PGx in clinical practice (Kaur and Nwabufo 2024).
The cost of PGx testing can also be prohibitive, particularly for specialty medications and for patients without insurance coverage. This creates a barrier to equitable access to personalized medicine among the financially disadvantaged (Morris et al. 2022). Despite the potential for cost savings in the long term due to reduced adverse drug reactions and improved treatment outcomes, the upfront cost of testing can be excessive for some patients and healthcare systems.
Clinicians may lack training to utilize PGx in treatment decisions. The reality of PGx adoption is in such infancy that the vast majority of physicians are ill-equipped to readily understand and apply PGx information effectively. Bridging this gap requires a multifaceted approach, including developing robust educational programs and decision support tools for practicing clinicians and incorporating comprehensive PGx curricula into medical and pharmacy schools. Moreover, interdisciplinary collaboration among geneticists, pharmacists, and clinicians is crucial to foster an environment that supports PGx application in daily medical decisions.
Ongoing efforts to realize full potential of PGx in clinical practice. While PGx holds great promise for personalized medicine, there are significant challenges that need to be addressed for its successful implementation into clinical practice. As the field continues to evolve, ongoing research, education, and policy development will be critical to fully realize its potential (Bornhorst 2024).
Learn more about UGenome’s Personalized Medication Service, ProPEx, or contact UGenome. You can also find case studies for UGenome’s bioinformatics services Metabolite Identification, Bone Metastasis Risk Analysis in Breast Cancer, Survival Analysis with gene signatures in cancer
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