Ispectrum Magazine Ispectrum Magazine #13 | Page 7

Examples of this new social development in medicine includes the personalised medicine summit taking place in the Life Science Institute, University of British Columbia , in partnership with the Personalized Medicine Initiative, Genome BC and LifeScience BC on Sunday 7th-9th of June this year. Professor Terry Allen, Conference Organizer, describes that “in many ways, British Columbia (BC) constitutes an ideal testing ground for putting a personalised medicine rogramme into practice, with its highly integrated singlepayer health care system, its ethnically diverse, well-educated population and its advanced expertise in the development and application of molecularly-based medicine .” This scheme aims to use pharmacogenomics and other ‘omics’ analyses to guide diagnosis and treatment and manage, interpret and use big data in a new system of data consolidation to access improving health care in BC and investment in basic and translational research to advance personalized medicine discoveries. This aims to create a better knowledge of the maintenance of wellness in the public and eventually create 6 new development in personalised medicine beyond what has already been discovered. Another example of the progress and breadth that personalised medicine has reached is in the PMWC (personalised medicine world conference) held in Silicon Valley 2014. This conference provides the entire range of people involved in personalise medicine, and each speaker gives a unique take on the developments of the future. Brook Byers, senior partner in KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers), even goes as far to say that “this is the best personalised medicine conference there is today .” From 400 attenders and 41 speakers in 2010 to 1000+ attendees and 100+ speakers, is it clear to see there is growing interest in the area of personalised medicine with more than 40 companies investing in the development of the scheme, socially and technologically.