DOI: 10.1159/000189629 Assessing Patient Readiness for the Clinical Adoption of Personalized Medicine

data revealed that participants were concerned with issues surrounding privacy and confidentiality of genetic test re-sults, particularly with respect to access of information by insurers, with potential costs of testing and issues related to accuracy of test results. Questions regarding willingness to pay revealed that patients would be more willing to pay out-of-pocket if the disease associated with pharmacogenomic testing for treatment was perceived to be high risk (e.g., colorectal cancer) versus a chronic condition that was per-ceived as lower risk (e.g., high cholesterol). Conclusion: As the personalized medicine approach is increasingly incorpo-rated into health care, understanding patients ’ needs and their readiness to adopt these novel technologies will be-come progressively more important for the development of appropriate health policies. Copyright © 2009 S. Karger AG, Basel Personalized medicine is the translation of the science of pharmacogenomics into clinical practice. Personal-ized medicine involves preventative, diagnostic, and therapeutic interventions, with risk defined through ge-netics as well as clinical and family histories. There are already several well-known examples of personalized medicine based upon using pharmacogenomics [1–8]. However, pharmacogenomic-based diagnostics and ther