Personalized Medicine and the Future of Health Care

Watch video of a Sept. 29, 2010, Lunch and Learn Event with Dr. Jeff Balser, vice chancellor for health affairs, Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Too often, physicians must base life-and-death decisions not on how an individual will respond to therapy but instead on how large groups of patients did — on average — under similar circumstances. Today, in what is being called the Post-Genome Era, we have the opportunity to develop truly personalized medicine, an approach that bases treatment not on the odds but on scientific evidence about how a patient will respond based on his or her own DNA.

Dr. Jeff Balser outlines the promise of personalized medicine and its potential in health care reform.