Research
The CPM draws together researchers from across the broad field of personalised medicine. The CPM’s Director and Fellows contribute across a range of departments and projects across the University and beyond. You can see individual team members’ research interests here and you can contact us for further details.
Example projects
Ethical Preparedness in Genomic Medicine (EPPiGen) is part of a Wellcome Trust funded collaborative award that combines conceptual and empirical research to explore the concept of ethical preparedness (EP) in areas of medicine that are rapidly evolving. The work focusses on the gathering, and use, of big data in medicine with a specific example of genomics and its use in healthcare. EP is defined as the ability and willingness to work in morally appropriate ways particularly when off-the-shelf solutions or relevant regulations are ambivalent in a particular context. The research examines how the promise and challenge of genomic medicine is understood and experienced by those providing and engaging with the service.
Genetics and health in our everyday lives is an initiative designed to gauge wider public perceptions of aspects of personalised medicine. The study is a collaboration with Mass Observation, an ongoing national social research project that supports a panel of public participants to write about topical issues. The research focuses on understanding panellist’s experiences of personalised care and genetics within the context of narratives of choice in healthcare policy. The work also seeks to understand public perspectives on the issues genetic testing can raise.
Perinatal Mental Health is an evidence mapping exercise commissioned and funded by the PAM Foundation. Conducted in collaboration with the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York, the project was designed to outline the breadth and distribution of evidence already available from Systematic Reviews in the field of perinatal mental health and to help identify potential new research avenues.
Familial Genomic Information: scope, context and implications for practice is a collaboration between the Centre for Personalised Medicine (CPM) and the PHG Foundation. The initiative comprised a workshop focusing on considerations and challenges encountered in clinical practice when managing and communicating familial genomic information, and how these interact with wider ethical and legal considerations. Outcomes include the formulation of recommendations for future research and NHS practice.
The ethical challenges of diversifying genomic data comprised a qualitative evidence synthesis on ethical, legal and social aspects of attempts to diversify genomic data and was commissioned by Genomics England’s Diverse Data Initiative. The review highlighted how, despite calls to increase diversity, genomic data held in worldwide research databases and biobanks remains overwhelmingly Eurocentric. This means that our understanding of what normal variation in a genetic code looks like is not so good for those of other ancestries, and this is a problem for emerging tools like polygenic risk scores.
Lucassen group – CELS Oxford
Our Director, Professor Lucassen, runs an interdisciplinary research group exploring the ethical, legal and social aspects of scientific and technological advances in healthcare. Her group’s research interests overlap with those of the CPM’s.