Personalized medicine (PM) moves at the same pace of data and technology and calls for important changes in healthcare. New players are participating, providing impulse to PM. We review the conceptual foundations for PM and personalized healthcare and their evolution through scientific publications where a clear definition and the features of the different formulations are identifiable. We then examined PM policy documents of the International Consortium for Personalised Medicine and related initiatives to understand how PM stakeholders have been changing. Regional authorities and stakeholders have joined the race to deliver personalized care and are driving toward what could be termed as the next personalized healthcare. Their role as a key stakeholder in PM is expected to be pivotal.

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Papers of special note have been highlighted as: • of interest

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Vol. 18, No. 3

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Received 17 July 2020

Accepted 2 March 2021

Published online 7 April 2021

Published in print May 2021

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Jean-Luc Sanne, Officer of the European Commission, for editing and for the insights he provided on this paper which helped us to reinforce the overall structure of the paper. They also thank Jeanne Egar, Canadian Institute of Health Research – Institute of Genetics, for editing the manuscript and Nadia Buonomo, Fondazione Toscana Life Sciences, for her help in the design of the figures included in this paper.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The Coordination and Support Action Regions4PerMed has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 825812. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

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