Simposio Internazionale di Reumatologia GISEA/OEG 2025

Precision medicine vs personalized medicine: How to manage the complexity of rheumatic diseases

21-22-23 MAGGIO 2025

Board Scientifico

Roberto Caporali
Fabrizio Conti
Florenzo Iannone
Fabiola Atzeni
Elisa Gremese
Marco Sebastiani
Ennio Giulio Favalli

Rationale

The landscape of rheumatology is undergoing a profound transformation with the emergence of precision medicine and personalized medicine approaches. While these terms are often used interchangeably, they represent distinct paradigms that offer unique opportunities and challenges in managing rheumatic diseases. This congress aims to explore and clarify these approaches while addressing their practical implementation in rheumatology care.

Rheumatic diseases represent a complex spectrum of disorders characterized by their heterogeneous nature, variable progression patterns, and diverse treatment responses. Traditional "one-size-fits-all" treatment approaches have shown limited success in managing these conditions effectively, leading to the emergence of more targeted strategies.

The field faces several critical challenges such as high variability in disease manifestations and progression, unpredictable treatment responses, complex interactions between genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors, limited understanding of disease subtypes and endotypes, growing array of therapeutic options with varying effectiveness across patient subgroups.

Precision Medicine vs Personalized Medicine?

This conference will explore the fundamental differences between these approaches.

Precision Medicine is focused on:

stratifying patients into subgroups based on biomarkers, genetics, and molecular pathways
use of advanced technologies and "-omics" approaches
identification of specific disease mechanisms and targeted treatments

Personalized Medicine is based on:

the individual patient's broader context, including lifestyle, preferences, and social factors
incorporation of patient-reported outcomes and quality of life measures
sharing decision-making and patient engagement

The following will be discussed during the congress:

Diagnostic approaches such as novel biomarker discovery, integration of multi-omics data, artificial intelligence
Treatment Strategies as biomarker-guided therapy selection, prediction models for treatment response, patient-specific dosing approaches, risk stratification methods, decision support tools, integration of real-world evidence

Through interactive sessions, expert presentations, and collaborative discussions, this congress will address the crucial question of how to effectively combine precision and personalized medicine approaches to optimize the management of rheumatic diseases while maintaining practical feasibility in real-world clinical settings.