How the science of personalized medicines will change the clinical management of patients in the pharmacy

摘要

The prescribing and dispensing of medication is currently a 'one-size-fits-all' process and, by association, the average pharmacy will contain an anthology of one-size-fits-all packets of 28 oral dose forms, which will be, in turn, labelled according to a pile of one-size-fits-all prescriptions detailing rigidly indicated dosage regimens. The trouble is, unlike pharmaceutical dose forms, patients are not rigidly quality controlled by the pharmaceutical industry to ensure consistency. With evidence-based medicine, there has been a standardization of patient care to a certain extent. When it comes to medicines, however, we have to consider whether the clinical trials upon which we base our evidence and therefore compile the often strict prescribing guidelines in use by the NHS in the UK and other health systems internationally, are inherently flawed when they too are based upon the assumption that patients are homogenous in their response to medication.