RARE EARTH ELEMENTS: A NEW ECONOMIC OPPORTUNITY?
October 19, 2020STRATEGIES TO ENHANCE WATER DEMAND MANAGEMENT IN SARAWAK
October 19, 2020ASM’s Precision Medicine Initiative for Malaysia was initiated in September 2017. This Task Force is chaired by Professor Datuk Dr A Rahman A Jamal FASc and has nine active members. This initiative aims to study the feasibility of mainstreaming precision medicine to complement the current clinical practice.
Precision medicine is an emerging approach but fast gaining popularity for accurate disease treatment and prevention strategies. It is an approach towards disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment that seeks to maximise effectiveness by considering individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle. Precision medicine is seen to provide high-value healthcare by improving outcomes while decreasing the cost of treatment.
Malaysia’s rich ethnic diversity is a gold mine of rich and diverse genomic data which is much sought-after by pharmaceutical companies the world over. Such diverse genetic information holds great potential of predictive analytics for much-targeted treatments which is fundamental for precision medicine.
The Task Force has mapped the landscape of individual initiatives in Malaysia and is of the opinion that a National level initiative must be in place for a much-concerted effort. This is to safeguard the genetic data and better manage the access to this gold mine for more impactful research and development (R&D) as well as international collaborations. As such, a solid legal and regulatory framework is also needed to be in place supported by updated and relevant Acts such as the Personal Data Protection Act specific for human genetic data.
ASM Task Force on Precision Medicine: Public Engagement Workshop was organised in November 2019 to gather the views of the stakeholders representing the quadruple helix of the benefits of introducing precision medicine to complement conventional medical services. The Task Force’s findings will be translated into a position paper which upon the approval of STIPAC will be discussed with the Ministry of Health with the aim to position precision medicine as one of the key areas for Malaysia to focus on over the s through the 12th Malaysia Plan (RMKe-12).
