The UK Government’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has released a Science and Innovation Audit report on Precision Medicine in Scotland, presenting “a broad-ranging analysis of Scotland’s capabilities, the challenges and the substantial opportunities for future economic growth” associated with the innovative Precision Medicine approach to identifying and developing treatments that are effective for particular groups of patients.
A consortium formed in 2017 to focus on Scotland’s strengths in Precision Medicine has produced this evidence-based report, led by the University of Glasgow and collated by independent consultants. A key message from the completed report is that Scotland has the academic and clinical excellence, business expertise and supporting ecosystem to support the development and implementation of Precision Medicine.
The report specifically identifies imaging among the tools which can be used to stratify disease (as well as genomics, metabolomics, etc.), with Scotland’s imaging capabilities prominently mentioned as key assets for Precision Medicine, including:
- Imaging Centre of Excellence (ICE) at Glasgow’s QEUH campus
- CRUK Beatson Institute in Glasgow
- Queen’s Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh
- Tayside Clinical Research Centre in Dundee
- Institute of Medical Sciences in Aberdeen
- NHS Scotland Safe Havens
The role of the SINAPSE network is acknowledged in the report, as well, for coordinating imaging research collaborations across Scottish universities and contributing to applications of AI and machine learning in medical image analysis.
The Science and Innovation Audit report, and an executive summary, can be downloaded here.