The emergence of Ohio State’s Center for Personalized Health Care came about in three phases, the first of which began simply by asking questions: What should be the scope of personalized health care at Ohio State? Is it only personalized medicine focused on disease, or also prevention and health maintenance? What does it really mean for patients – and for those who treat them? What are the associated areas of basic and translational research? How will it affect our students and our College of Medicine curriculum? How do we bring it to practical reality?”
Through the asking of these questions and the discussions that followed, it became clear that many aspects of personalized health care were already in place here at the Medical Center – activities such as genetics-driven research aimed at discovering the “best-fit” treatment for a patient. Moreover, some key aspects of the infrastructure needed to bring personalized health care to reality were also present – such as a robust clinical information warehouse and electronic medical record, and Ohio State’s health plan for employees and staff.
In the second phase of Ohio State’s multi-year plan, the Center for Personalized Health Care was formed and approved in 2005, with a Steering Committee appointed to conduct a systemwide inventory of personalized health care practices and research. The CPHC leadership also began to organize programmatic platforms, currently grouped under six key areas: biomedical informatics, genomics and biomarker science, imaging, clinical trials and investigation, employee health/ managed care and clinical application.
This second phase of the center’s planning process also involved extensive faculty and staff educational programs that helped raise awareness about personalized health care and how it will improve peoples’ lives. Those efforts were the result of a three-year branding initiative which involved extensive research and input from Medical Center faculty and staff, community leaders and physicians and researchers across the country. In addition, the Medical Center’s strategic plan then underway focused on personalized health care as the unifying theme for the six signature programs, and the university Office of Human resources, working with the Medical Center, focused on personalized health as the key strategy for the OSU Health Plan initiative “Your Plan For Health” which commenced January 2006.
The Ohio State University Medical Center is currently moving into the third phase of development for its personalized health care initiative. This phase is characterized by the creation of an administrative coordination and leadership entity to serve as a center to facilitate and advocate multiple initiatives that comprise personalized health care – research, education, prevention and treatments designed to meet patients’ individual needs based on their unique biology, behavior and environment. This administrative structure is involved in several personalized health care initiatives that will involve community and business partnerships throughout central Ohio and beyond, as well as academic collaborations around the country and the world.