Dr. James Broach poses in front of the Institute for Personalized Medicine on the Hershey Medical Center campus in Derry Township. Broach and three other scientists gave a presentation on the work of the institute during a Mini Medical School program on Wednesday night. (SUBMITTED)

HERSHEY - Imagine going to your doctor and getting a diagnosis from the genetic code that is stored on your cellphone.

That may seem like something from a sci-fi movie, but scientists at Penn State's Institute for Personalized Medicine predict this scenario is only a few years in the future.

Today, scientists can take blood or tissue samples from a patient and process them so they can read their genetic code. The cost is about $5,000, but in the near future, the cost will drop to $1,000 or less, Dr. Jim Broach, director of the Penn State Institute for Personalized Medicine, told an audience of more than 300 at the Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center on Wednesday night.

The institute opened its doors on the Derry

Dr. Glenn Gerhard (SUBMITTED)

Broach's talk was part of this year's Mini-Medical School program. Mini-Medical School will continue at the Medical Center on Tuesday evenings through April 2, offering a series of topics for the community to learn about medical science and how it translates into clinical treatments. Broach will repeat his presentation about the Institute for Personalized Medicine at 7 p.m. March 19 at Penn State Hershey Medical Group-Camp Hill.

Broach; Dr. Glenn Gerhard, lead investigator of the institute's bio-bank program; Dr. Walter Koltun; and Dr. Xuemei Huang

"In the not-too-distant future, all of you will have your (genetic) sequence done as a routine course of your medical evaluation," Broach explained. "You'll put it on your cellphone and take it out with you, and when you go into the doctor's office that will help dictate what treatments you should have. We can define you as an individual much more precisely than we ever could before."

Broach attributed this revolution

See the rest here:
Hershey Medical Center doctors tailor treatments to patients

Comments are closed.