Updating precision: Ethical and societal aspects of precision medicine in the era of big data
As a partner of the Precise4Q consortium, we organized a public symposium discussing precision medicine and ethics last Friday
The quest for a more granular, patient-tailored understanding of human disease has animated precision medicine over the course of the last two decades. Major improvements in the quality and ease of genome sequencing have propelled the expectation that precision medicine may be at an inflection point. However, with few exceptions, the large-scale clinical implementation of genomics has not yet materialized.
In the meantime, medicine is embracing a digital turn fueling yet another wave of promises and anticipating yet another paradigm shift in patient care. Big data such as electronic health records, geolocation data and sensor data from portable devices are at the core of this trend. Predictive analytics including the use of artificial intelligence for a variety of clinical tasks are key drivers in big data-driven medicine.
In this workshop we explored how the notion of precision is evolving at the intersection of personalized medicine and big data. In particular, far from taking the promise of precision in medicine as a byproduct of technological development, we set out to discuss the assumptions about human health and disease that sustain the quest for precision in the first place. We will thus interrogate how such transformations invest research participants, scientists, patients, physicians, healthcare institutions and policy makers.
Links to the presentations
- Download Dr. Julia Amann, 2022. Expectations and attitudes towards medical artificial intelligence (PDF, 899 KB)
- Download Dr. Luca Chiapperino, 2022. Udating Precision: Ethical and Societal Aspects of Precision Medicine in the Era of Big Data RE-IMAGINING ‘PRECISION’ The case of cancer immunotherapies (PDF, 1.9 MB)
- Download Prof. Barbara Prainsack, 2022. The value*s of Precision Medicine (PDF, 3.3 MB)
- Download Kelly Ormond, MS, CGC, 2022. Public preferences towards data management and governance in biobanks: A focus on the Swiss views (PDF, 7.2 MB)
