Clinical Decision Support for Personalized Medicine

The use of genetics to personalize health care has been a goal and ambition of clinicians for several years. If used appropriately, such an approach could lead to improved quality of care and reduced costs. However, several barriers exist to the effective and efficient use of genetics in medicine which include the magnitude and complexity of genetic information, the limited training of clinicians in genetics, and the limited number of genetics experts. Many thought leaders are looking to health IT and in particular CDS to overcome these barriers to realize personalized health care. This chapter will review several aspects of personalized health care including family health history, genetic testing, pharmacogenomics, and whole genome sequencing, as well as how CDS has and can support personalized health care. The chapter will also describe efforts that are ongoing or required to make CDS for personalized health care available on a widespread scale.