Scientist and medical doctor Dragan Primorac spoke of the use of new knowledge in medicine, saying that personalised medicine was fast developing globally, taking into account the genetic particularities of each patient. He said that Croatian experts were intensively working on the application of this concept, which includes molecular diagnostics and cell and gene therapy.
Primorac said that Croatia had the Personalised Medicine Cluster which has so far applied for a number of projects worth 30 million euros with the aim of establishing the first institution that would deal with this area.
"Personalised medicine is the right therapy for the right patient at the right time, and you can arrive at the right therapy only if you know the genome structure, because a certain amount of the same medicine may help one person and kill another," he said.
Primorac said that in the United States, owing to the lack of knowledge of pharmacogenetics, 200,000 people die and 2 million are hospitalised every year, adding that in the case of Croatia the question arises of how best to use the health budget of 22-24 billion kuna (3 billion euros).
The head of the Croatian Medical Association (HLZ), Zeljko Krznaric, stressed the importance of clinical guidelines in the treatment of diseases considering the assessment that nearly a third of all specialist examinations carried out in Croatia were unnecessary.