Precision Medicine

Pre­ci­sion med­i­cine is a tai­lored approach to health­care. It con­sid­ers an individual’s genet­ic make-up, envi­ron­ment and lifestyle to help guide pre­ven­tion, diag­no­sis and treatment.

Pre­ci­sion med­i­cine has the poten­tial to trans­form health­care, improve patient out-comes, enhance expe­ri­ences, reduce vari­a­tion in care and make bet­ter use of resources.

The CEIH is ded­i­cat­ed to cre­at­ing a coor­di­nat­ed approach to pre­ci­sion med­i­cine across South Aus­tralia. Our vision is a health­care ecosys­tem that uses pre­ci­sion med­i­cine to deliv­er per­son­alised, effec­tive, and effi­cient care for all South Australians.

To work towards this vision, we have devel­oped a Pre­ci­sion Med­i­cine Blue­print (PDF 196KB) which out­lines key pri­or­i­ties for advanc­ing pre­ci­sion med­i­cine across the state.

Pri­or­i­ty areas

The blue­print iden­ti­fies five key pri­or­i­ty areas: 

• Sup­port­ing Infra­struc­ture and Ser­vice Mod­els: Infra­struc­ture (phys­i­cal and soft i.e. gov­er­nance and strat­e­gy) that sup­ports sus­tain­abil­i­ty. Ser­vice mod­els that embed and opti­mise stan­dard­ised care delivery. 
• Build­ing a Skilled Work­force: Build­ing capac­i­ty and capa­bil­i­ty to sup­port appli­ca­tion of pre­ci­sion med­i­cine through train­ing, edu­ca­tion and stan­dards of care. 
• Enhanc­ing Data and Dig­i­tal Health: Con­nect­ed, inte­grat­ed data sys­tems with sup­port­ing infra­struc­ture and sys­tem inter­op­er­abil­i­ty to opti­mise deliv­ery of care and machine learn­ing operations. 
• Dri­ving Research, Inno­va­tion and Trans­la­tion: An evolv­ing health sys­tem that val­ues research and inno­va­tion with a seam­less inter­face between research, eval­u­a­tion and health­care delivery. 
• Engag­ing the Com­mu­ni­ty: An informed pub­lic that guides the appli­ca­tion of pre­ci­sion med­i­cine and is sup­port­ed to enhance edu­ca­tion and health lit­er­a­cy in pre­ci­sion medicine. 

To achieve this vision and progress pri­or­i­ty areas requires a coor­di­nat­ed and col­lab­o­ra­tive effort. Our role is to bring peo­ple togeth­er to share knowl­edge, iden­ti­fy chal­lenges, and oppor­tu­ni­ties, and devel­op strate­gies to advance pre­ci­sion med­i­cine state-wide.

Our focus

• Under­stand­ing the cur­rent land­scape of pre­ci­sion med­i­cine in our state.
• Con­nect­ing stake­hold­ers to cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for collaboration.
• Pro­gress­ing pri­or­i­ty areas by refin­ing and pri­ori­tis­ing key sys­tem focus areas.
• Fos­ter­ing part­ner­ships and knowl­edge exchange to accel­er­ate implementation.

Cur­rent ini­tia­tives

The CEIH is work­ing with part­ners across the state to advance pre­ci­sion med­i­cine through a range of ini­tia­tives, including:

• enhanc­ing data inte­gra­tion for mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary decision-making
• sup­port­ing work­force education
• devel­op­ing statewide clin­i­cal pathways
• estab­lish­ing reg­istries and assess­ing spe­cialised therapies
• cre­at­ing frame­works to reduce vari­a­tion in care.

Through ini­tia­tives like the South Aus­tralian Com­pre­hen­sive Can­cer Net­work, we sup­port col­lab­o­ra­tion and clin­i­cal lead­er­ship to help embed pre­ci­sion med­i­cine across the state. We also work with con­sumers and com­mu­ni­ties to ensure pub­lic per­spec­tives help shape the future of pre­ci­sion medicine.

Have a question?

Con­tact us at CEIH@​sa.​gov.​au.