title: Towards a global IT system for personalized medicine: the Medicine Safety Code initiative.
abstract: The availability of pharmacogenomic data of individual patients can significantly improve physicians' prescribing behavior, lead to a reduced incidence of adverse drug events and an improvement of effectiveness of treatment. The Medicine Safety Code (MSC) initiative is an effort to improve the ability of clinicians and patients to share pharmacogenomic data and to use it at the point of care. The MSC is a standardized two-dimensional barcode that captures individual pharmacogenomic data. The system is backed by a web service that allows the decoding and interpretation of anonymous MSCs without requiring the installation of dedicated software. The system is based on a curated, ontology-based knowledge base representing pharmacogenomic definitions and clinical guidelines. The MSC system performed well in preliminary tests. To evaluate the system in realistic health care settings and to translate it into practical applications, the future participation of stakeholders in clinical institutions, researchers, pharmaceutical companies, genetic testing providers, health IT companies and health insurance organizations will be essential.
authors.affiliation: Section for Medical Expert and Knowledge-Based Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Samwald
authors.affiliation: Section for Medical Expert and Knowledge-Based Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: José Antonio
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Minarro-Giménez
authors.affiliation: Section for Medical Expert and Knowledge-Based Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Kathrin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Blagec
authors.affiliation: Section for Medical Expert and Knowledge-Based Systems, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Klaus-Peter
authors.initials: KP
authors.lastname: Adlassnig
mesh_terms: D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems / Q000592:standards; D030541:Databases, Genetic / Q000592:standards; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions / Q000235:genetics* / Q000517:prevention & control*; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000592:standards*; D055991:Health Records, Personal; D006801:Humans; D016247:Information Storage and Retrieval / Q000592:standards*; D038622:Internationality; D010355:Patient Identification Systems / Q000592:standards; D010597:Pharmacogenetics / Q000592:standards*; D057285:Precision Medicine / Q000592:standards*