Innovation Academy demonstrates the impact of personalised medicine today
Our second Innovation Academy attracted more than 100 delegates to the Royal Institution of Great Britain on Friday 6th December 2013. The theme of the symposium - ‘Personalised medicine: today’s reality, not just a promise for tomorrow’, examined advances in three areas – therapeutic drug monitoring, infectious diseases and transplantation, and oncology – with particular recognition of the impact personalised medicine is making in healthcare today.
For more than 200 years the Royal Institution of GB has been home to eminent scientists whose discoveries have helped to shape the modern world, making it a particularly inspiring venue for this Innovation Academy event. Speakers included respected scientists and clinicians from across healthcare and industry including ourselves. The Innovation Academy aims to support and showcase scientific innovations developed here and ways to improve patient care now and in the future.
Fiona Carragher, Deputy Chief Scientific Officer for England, opened the meeting by discussing the many challenges facing today’s heath service and how they can be addressed. “Science will be crucial in this, with research constantly informing new ways of working. While personalised medicine has been in use for a long time – for example INR measurement in anticoagulation therapy – it is clear that genomics and personalised medicine continue to be at the forefront of many new techniques.”
Dr Dominic Harrington, Viapath Scientific Director, co-organised the symposium. “Personalised medicine isn’t just a theoretical research idea, but offers practical solutions for tailoring and monitoring therapies in a wide variety of clinical conditions, delivering improvements in patient care today. The Innovation Academy aims to create an environment supportive of innovation, quality and the development of our future scientific leaders. We know that good science equals good medicine.”
