The Interdisciplinary Art of Precision Medicine with Dr. Philip Empey
Most of us have heard about precision medicine, but do we know how this patient-centered care actually works? This week, we’re sharing our interview with Dr. Philip Empey, Associate Director for Pharmacogenomics of the Pitt/UPMC Institute of Precision Medicine. Dr. Empey helps us understand precision medicine and pharmacogenomics, discussing its potential for improving healthcare and the preparation necessary for its success.
Dr. Philip Empey is the Associate Director for Pharmacogenomics of the Pitt/UPMC Institute of Precision Medicine and leads the PreCISE-Rx and Test2Learn teams to implement pharmacogenomics clinical, research, and educational initiatives. He also directs the University of Pittsburgh - Thermo Fisher Scientific Pharamcogenomics Center of Excellence which is deploying population scale preemptive pharmagenomics testing (to >150,000 patients) in western Pennsylvania. As a clinician-scientist in the Department of Pharmacy and Therapeutics, Dr. Empey conducts NIH-funded clinical and translational research aimed at understanding the mechanisms of the variability in drug response to improve medication-related outcomes in critically-ill patients.
Dr. Empey’s research interests include understanding the role/impact of xenobiotic transporters following neurological injury, transporter pharmacogenomics, pharmacogenomics clinical implementation, collection of medication-related phenotype information, and genotype-phenotype discovery. Dr. Empey teaches at the graduate level in pharmacokinetics, pharmacogenomics, and drug transporters in the Schools of Pharmacy, Medicine, and Nursing. He also has a research interest in innovative educational models to transform education.