Personalised medicine – best practices exchange and personal health implementation in European regions – a qualitative study concept under the Regions4PerMed (h2020) project

Personalised medicine (PM) is the adaptation of medical treatment to an individual patient. More importantly, PM offers the potential to detect disease earlier when it is easier to treat effectively. PM is beginning to overcome the limitations of traditional medicine. In PM there are many potential benefits and facilitators but also many barriers. The goals of the Regions4PerMed project are to set up the first interregional cooperation on PM, align strategies and financial instruments, and most importantly, identify primary barriers in personal medicine adoption in the health care system and systematic actions to remove as many of them as possible to create a future where PM is fully integrated into real life settings. Each key action activity will be followed by a focus group or semi-structured qualitative interview. The questions asked during the research will concern barriers and facilitators of PM implementation in the country of a subject and will concern: medical big data and electronic medical records; health technology in connected and integrated care; the health industry; facilitate the innovation flow in health care; socio-economic aspects. The qualitative study outcomes are supposed to bring more qualitative data to the discussion. They could be implemented to the daily practice of the health care system’s stakeholders through the best practices transferred to all five key strategic areas of the Regions4PerMed project.