With a tailored approach to diagnosis, treatment, and medication, personalized or precision medicine is arguably the future of medicine. It depicts a time where healthcare may primarily portray prevention instead of treatment.

To implement precision medicine in Qatar, developing relevant expertise within the healthcare workforce, as well as investing in research and education is of utmost importance. As a result, this would require training specialists in precision medicine to understand genomic data, and having geneticists and genetic counsellors to convert that data into valuable information for the patients.

Furthermore, the College of Health and Life Sciences (CHLS) at Qatar Foundation’s Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) is offering master’s and PhD programs in Genomics and Precision Medicine to those with undergraduate and graduate degrees in health and life sciences.

Applying precision medicine to clinical practice requires a deep understanding of genomics and environmental factors as it varies between populations, precision medicine approaches developed based on western populations may not interpret the same way when applied to the population in Qatar.

Therefore, the master’s and PhD programs at HBKU will teach students how our genome, our environment, and their interactions can affect disease outcome, enabling them to understand why certain people react differently to the same treatment and why some present more seriously than others. Genomic data can also help identify diseases that people are predisposed to suffer from at some point in their lives, while it also helps determine treatment plans for them. Additionally, the Precision Medicine programs at HBKU offer the students training in state-of-the-art technologies in genomics, bioinformatics, and big data analysis.

Dr Edward Stuenkel, Dean of CHLS

According to Dr Edward Stuenkel, Dean of CHLS, “Our program ensures that students have a comprehensive understanding of genomic data so that when they graduate, they are aware of the ethical, social, and sociological implications of their study. They can then communicate this information to genetic counsellors who translate it into everyday terms and provide a comprehensive understanding of what it means to patients”.

He also explained that the job market for those studying in this specific field. However, there is a lot of effort to be made between the research sector and the clinical sector. As precision medicine continues to pervade the world of healthcare, there is a strong need to also educate healthcare workers currently in the workforce.

The hurdles faced by precision medicine practitioners vary from the cost to privacy and capacity building, but Dr Stuenkel believes that the key to creating an informed community is to integrate an understanding of precision medicine in K-12 programs. He explained the importance of providing the younger generation with this information as they are the future of science.

For a complete list of QF’s initiatives and projects, please visit: www.qf.org.qa 

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