The puzzle of precision medicine
What will it take for precision medicine to benefit more Norwegian cancer patients?
Precision cancer medicine is about giving the right treatment to the right patient at the right time.
In a new video series, we ask key figures in Norway’s cancer community what pieces are still missing for precision medicine to become an integral part of cancer care.
Watch the video series here:
In the first video, Elisabeth Jarnæss, Chair of CONNECT and Medical Lead Norway at AbbVie, discusses the importance of adopting new treatments. Jarnæss believes that if new treatments are not approved by Norwegian health authorities, innovations will not reach patients.
“We talk a great deal about having high-quality data and biobanks, but unless we adopt innovations, we will not generate high-quality data about them either. We need to get the entire chain moving, and it needs to work,” says Jarnæss.
The impact of targeted treatment
In one episode, Åslaug Helland, Professor of Oncology at the University of Oslo and Director of Research and Group Leader at Oslo University Hospital (Comprehensive Cancer Centre), discusses the national IMPRESS-Norway study. As many as 40 per cent of the patients who received targeted treatment benefited from it.
To give more patients access to such opportunities, Helland believes that Norway needs sustainable infrastructure integrated into the public healthcare system.
Individual assessments versus group-level decisions
What makes one patient stand out from a group? And how can we bridge the gap between individual assessments and group-level decisions when new cancer treatments are evaluated?
Marius S. Lindberg, a lawyer at the Norwegian Cancer Society, discusses the tension between current decision-making systems and the law:
“While the Norwegian Medical Products Agency bases its decisions on groups, the law leans towards individual assessments.”
Access to diagnostic data
Personalised medicine aims to ensure that the right patient receives the right treatment at the right time. But what needs to be in place for this to work in practice?
Liv Marit Dørum, Head of Section at the Cancer Registry of Norway, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, shares her perspective on one important piece of the puzzle: better access to diagnostic data on genomes and biomarkers.
Without high-quality, structured data, it becomes more difficult to:
identify patients who may benefit from new treatments
implement personalised medicine in clinical practice
document outcomes and build knowledge for future treatments
AI models for better treatment decisions
Finally, Tarjei S. Hveem, Head of the Institute for Cancer Genetics and Informatics at Oslo University Hospital, shares his perspective on how artificial intelligence can contribute to more accurate diagnoses and better treatment decisions.
He also highlights what is needed for Norwegian hospitals to adopt such models in clinical practice:
“We would like better infrastructure around this process, enabling us to move promising AI models from research into hospital practice more efficiently. A partnership between the public and private sectors would be a natural approach.”
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