Evidence map›Paper›PMID 35232380›Full record

ArticleBMC primary care2022

Representations of personalised medicine in family medicine: a qualitative analysis.

Marie S Boyer, Daniel Widmer, Christine Cohidon, Béatrice Desvergne, Jacques Cornuz, Idris Guessous, Daniela Cerqui

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PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in BMC primary care, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
8citing papers in PubMed, 1 pooled it
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

  1. Pooled it
  2. Review
  3. Article
  4. Exploring interdisciplinary perspectives on the implementation ofJournal of Alzheimer's disease : JAD · 2025
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  5. Review
  6. Article
  7. Article
  8. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

7 authors.

Marie S BoyerDepartment of Family Medicine, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), Lausanne, Switzerland. boyer.mariesandy@gmail.com.
Daniel WidmerDepartment of Family Medicine, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Christine CohidonDepartment of Family Medicine, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Béatrice DesvergneCentre for Integrative Genomics, National Centre of Competence in Research Frontiers in Genetics, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Jacques CornuzDepartment of Family Medicine, Centre for Primary Care and Public Health (Unisanté), Lausanne, Switzerland.
Idris GuessousDepartment of Community Medicine, Primary Care and Emergency Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals, Geneva, Switzerland.
Daniela CerquiInstitute of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

backgroundThe promise of personalised medicine (PM) to transform healthcare has sparked great enthusiasm in the last years. Yet, its lack of consensus around the nature and scope of the concept has ended in terminological confusion amongst the users in primary care. We aimed to investigate the perceptions of doctors and their patients in response to this evolving concept. This present article focuses on the general understanding of personalised medicine, underlining the confusion over the concept.

methodsSemi-structured comprehensive interviews were conducted with 10 general practitioners (GPs) and 10 of their patients. The purposive sampling took into account the doctor's age, sex, and place of practice (rural/urban); each doctor recruited one patient of the same age and sex. Each interview began with the same open-ended question about the participant's knowledge of the topic, after which a working definition was provided to continue the discussion. Using the grounded theory method, the analysis consisted of open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

resultsFrom our present analysis focusing on the general understanding of PM, three main themes representing the concept emerged. The first two representations being "centred on the person as a whole" and "focused on alternative and complementary methods", in which the therapeutic relationship was stated as key. The third theme "medicine open to innovation" involved the few participants who had a good understanding of the concept and could associate personalised medicine with genomics. For those who value therapeutic relationship, the risks of accepting innovation could result in "fast-food" medicine and interpersonal barriers. DISCUSSION: PM is predominantly unfamiliar in family medicine. It is misinterpreted as a holistic or integrative type of medicine. This semantic confusion probably lies in the choice of the label "personalised" or from the lack of a uniform definition for the term.

Indexed as

Family PracticeGeneral PractitionersGrounded TheoryHumansPrecision MedicineConceptual confusionDefinitionFamily medicineHealth conceptPersonalised medicineRepresentation

Identifiers

PMID35232380
PMCPMC8889694

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.