Forward-looking Project: Individualized Medicine
Individualized medicine represents a major challenge for health researchers, health care systems and the health care sector. As well as allowing more effective medical treatments and therapies to be developed, individualized medicine also allows new business models to be created. Data protection and patient safety represent special challenges in this context.
As part of the Health Research Framework Programme of the Federal Government, Germany is supporting the development of diagnostic and therapeutic agents in the form of direct funding at different stages in the innovation process (from fundamental life science R&D to pre-clinical and clinical patient-based research and commercialization).
One of the most fundamental challenges in the field of health research is achieving the greatest possible level of therapeutic effectiveness for each patient whilst simultaneously minimizing any potential side effects. Major progress in research into the causes of diseases and new diagnostic techniques are bringing this goal closer on the pathway to achieving individualized medicine.
