Personalized medicine at London's hospitals has received a major boost.
3M Canada announced Friday it is donating $600,000 to the London Health Sciences Centre and St. Joseph’s Health Care London. The money will be divide equally between the two.
The LHSC will use its share to help buy new equipment and hire laboratory staff for genomic diagnostics in Canada’s first hospital-wide implementation of personalized medicine. The precision medicine program will be headed up by clinical pharmacologist Dr. Richard Kim.
"This 3M gift will help us transform the model of care, using personalized gene testing for precise diagnostics to increase patient safety and quality of care," says Murray Glendining, LHSC president and CEO. "Dr. Kim’s work also has the potential to reduce in-hospital stays by freeing up beds, improving patient flow and reducing treatment costs."
St. Joseph's will use the money for a research chair in molecular imaging.
“Molecular imaging is a key enabler of ‘precision medicine,’ interventions targeted to an individual patient’s unique genetic makeup," says Dr. Gillian Kernaghan, president and CEO of St. Joseph’s. "Through 3M Canada’s leadership support, we will advance knowledge at the very earliest stages of disease, so that we can deal with it quickly and effectively.”
John MacFarlane, president and CEO of the London Health Sciences Foundation says a lot of thought went into what area of the hospital 3M would donate to.
"We've been in discussions with 3M for a little while now about what kind of an investment they would like to make in our community through our foundation," says MacFarlane. "They chose personalized medicine. Needless to say, we are thrilled as an organization. The community and the country is going to see the benefit down the road."
Personalized medicine centres around understanding the genetic differences between individuals and, in doing so, providing the right dose of the right medicine at the right time for every patient.