Preliminary results from a multi-country survey investigating citizens’ attitudes towards personalized medicine and data sharing
 
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1
Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
 
2
Amsterdam University Medical Center, Netherlands
 
 
Publication date: 2023-04-26
 
 
Popul. Med. 2023;5(Supplement):A601
 
ABSTRACT
Background and objectives:
Personalized medicine is defined as a medical model that aims to provide tailored prevention and treatment to individuals, potentially impacting healthcare systems worldwide. Nonetheless, it requires healthy citizens to share their health data to assess their health status correctly. With this survey, we investigate the attitudes of citizens in different EU countries towards personalized medicine and data sharing.

Methods:
Through the YouGov platform, we distributed an online 30-question survey to citizens from 8 EU countries (Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Hungary, Romania, and Poland). Inclusion criteria were 18 years of age or above, citizenship in an EU country, and living in an EU country. Participants not satisfying any of these criteria were excluded. Participation was voluntary and unpaid. The survey was divided into four sections: Knowledge and opinions on personalized medicine and genetic tests, Data use and sharing, Personalized medicine governance, and Citizens’ needs. The performed statistical analysis is descriptive and comparative, including univariate tests (T-Test, Mann-Whitney test, chi-squared test). The STATA 16 software is used to perform statistical analysis. P significance threshold was set at < 0.05.

Results:
6500 citizens from 8 EU countries participated: 1000 from Italy, 1000 from Germany, 1000 from France, 1000 from Spain, 1000 from the Netherlands, 500 from Hungary, 500 from Romania, and 500 from Poland. Participants were spread evenly among the age range 18-99. Detailed statistical analysis is still ongoing, but preliminary results show attitudes to be more favorable in younger generations. In contrast, older people are generally more hesitant to share data for health purposes.

Conclusion:
Personalized medicine can potentially change the classical medical paradigm of diagnosis-treatment towards a prevention-oriented system. Notably, an approach that considers people’s opinions is needed. Our work addresses this issue in detail with a multi-country approach.

ISSN:2654-1459
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