How Can We Boost the Pharmacogenomics Adoption Rate in Clinical Practice Around the World?

To the Editor:

There is a steadily increasing interest in pharmacogenomics (PGx) applications worldwide from all relevant stakeholders such as academic/research community, genetic laboratories, health care professionals, the general public, and health care services. This is also ascertained by the growing body of published research on PGx awareness/knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, and intentions of health care professionals and the public (Hansen et al., 2022; Lim et al., 2023; Qureshi et al., 2022; Wondrasek et al., 2024).

Prior research reports a relatively high level of PGx awareness among health care professionals and students. However, for the majority of health care professionals, the level of knowledge is still modest if not poor, especially for the older generation, with no relevant courses included in their studies and without postgraduate/doctoral training (Lanting et al., 2020; Qureshi et al., 2022).

Consequently, there is almost unanimity that health care professionals display low-to-moderate levels of self-confidence/readiness to apply PGx testing in everyday clinical practice such as recommending PGx tests, individualizing patient treatment according to PGx results, and discussing PGx results with patients and other health care professionals (Lanting et al., 2020). In our opinion, this appears to be the most important barrier to wider PGx adoption in clinical practice, coupled with others, such as the relative lack of clear clinical guidance and protocols, effective coordination with genetic laboratories, compensation from insurance funds, and sufficient support from the competent public authorities.

However, there are positive attitudes and intentions of health care professionals about PGx implementation in clinical practice and improving their level of knowledge and training. The latter may be due to their rather favorable stance for PGx testing contribution to optimizing drug response; minimizing side effects of drugs, vaccines, and other health interventions; reducing trial-and-error processes in therapeutics; and thus improving patient adherence to recommended treatment and overall satisfaction. Physicians' values, attitudes, and knowledge gaps can help illuminate the prospects and barriers in PGx adoption along with other health care professionals and stakeholders for a panoptic understanding and advancement of personalized/precision medicine around the world.