BackgroundRecently, individualized or personalized medicine (PM) has become a buzz word in the academic as well as public debate surrounding health care. However, PM lacks a clear definition and is open to interpretation. This conceptual vagueness complicates public discourse on chances, risks and limits of PM. Furthermore, stakeholders might use it to further their respective interests and preferences. For these reasons it is important to have a shared understanding of PM. In this paper, we present a sufficiently precise as well as adequate definition of PM with the potential of wide acceptance.MethodsFor this purpose, in a first step a systematic literature review was conducted to understand how PM is actually used in scientific practice. PubMed was searched using the keywords “individualized medicine”, “individualised medicine”, “personalized medicine” and “personalised medicine” connected by the Boolean operator OR. A data extraction tabloid was developed putting forward a means/ends-division. Full-texts of articles containing the search terms in title or abstract were screened for definitions. Definitions were extracted; according to the means/ends distinction their elements were assigned to the corresponding category. To reduce complexity of the resulting list, summary categories were developed inductively from the data using thematic analysis. In a second step, six well-known criteria for adequate definitions were applied to these categories to derive a so-called precising definition.ResultsWe identified 2457 articles containing the terms PM in title or abstract. Of those 683 contained a definition of PM and were thus included in our review. 1459 ends and 1025 means were found in the definitions. From these we derived the precising definition: PM seeks to improve stratification and timing of health care by utilizing biological information and biomarkers on the level of molecular disease pathways, genetics, proteomics as well as metabolomics.ConclusionsOur definition includes the aspects that are specific for developments labeled as PM while, on the other hand, recognizing the limits of these developments. Furthermore, it is supported by the quantitative analysis of PM definitions in the literature, which suggests that it it is widely acceptable and thus has the potential to avoid the above mentioned issues.

Background:While there is increasing evidence that Advance Care Planning has the potential to strengthen patient autonomy and improve quality of care near the end of life, it remains unclear whether it could also reduce net costs of care.Aim:This study aims to describe the cost implications of Advance Care Planning programmes and discusses ethical conflicts arising in this context.Design:We conducted a systematic review based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement.Data sources:We systematically searched the databases PubMed, NHS EED, EURONHEED, Cochrane Library and EconLit. We included empirical studies (no limitation to study type) that investigated the cost implications of Advance Care Planning programmes involving professionally facilitated end-of-life discussions.Results and discussion:Seven studies met our inclusion criteria. Four of them used a randomised controlled design, one used a before-after design and two were observational studies. Six studies found reductions in costs of care ranging from USD1041 to USD64,827 per patient, depending on the study period and the cost measurement. One study detected no differences in costs. Studies varied considerably regarding the Advance Care Planning intervention, patient selection and costs measured which may explain some of the variations in findings.Normative appraisal:Looking at the impact of Advance Care Planning on costs raises delicate ethical issues. Given the increasing pressure to reduce expenditures, there may be concerns that cost considerations could unduly influence the sensitive communication process, thus jeopardising patient autonomy. Safeguards are proposed to reduce these risks.Conclusion:The limited data indicate net cost savings may be realised with Advance Care Planning. Methodologically robust trials with clearly defined Advance Care Planning interventions are needed to make the costs and returns of Advance Care Planning transparent.

BackgroundWith Germany facing a shortage of doctors, hospitals have been increasingly recruiting physicians from abroad. Studies in other countries have shown that migrant physicians experience various difficulties in their work, which might impact the quality of patient care, physician job satisfaction, and, accordingly, retention. The experiences of migrant doctors in Germany have not been systematically studied so far and will likely differ from experiences migrant physicians make in other contexts. A thorough understanding of challenges faced by this group, however, is needed to develop adequate support structures—as required by the WHO Global Code of Practice on the International Recruitment of Health Personnel.MethodsA qualitative study was conducted to give an overview of the multifaceted difficulties migrant physicians might face in German hospitals. Twenty semi-structured interviews with foreign-born and foreign-trained physicians were conducted in German. Participants were recruited via the State Chambers of Physicians and snowballing based on a maximum variation sampling strategy varying purposefully by source country and medical specialty. The interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using qualitative content analysis.ResultsParticipants described difficulties relating to healthcare institutions, own competencies, and interpersonal interactions. Participants experienced certain legal norms, the regulation of licensure and application for work, and the organization of the hospital environment as inadequate. Most struggled with their lack of setting-specific (language, cultural, clinical, and system) knowledge. Furthermore, behaviour of patients and co-workers was perceived as discriminating or inadequate for other reasons.ConclusionsThis is the first study to describe the broad range of issues migrant physicians experience in Germany. Based on this information, institutional actors should devise support structures to ensure quality of care, physician wellbeing, and retention. For example, training opportunities should be offered where needed to support acquisition of setting-specific knowledge. Discrimination experienced by participants calls for better diversity management as a leadership task in healthcare institutions. Misinformation practices in recruitment could be managed by a voluntary code of ethical conduct. Further research is necessary to identify strategies that adequately address diverging normative positions between migrant health personnel and their patients and colleagues.

BackgroundPublic health surveillance is not ethically neutral and yet, ethics guidance and training for surveillance programmes is sparse. Development of ethics guidance should be based on comprehensive and transparently derived overviews of ethical issues and arguments. However, existing overviews on surveillance ethics are limited in scope and in how transparently they derived their results. Our objective was accordingly to provide an overview of ethical issues in public health surveillance; in addition, to list the arguments put forward with regards to arguably the most contested issue in surveillance, that is whether to obtain informed consent.MethodsEthical issues were defined based on principlism. We assumed an ethical issue to arise in surveillance when a relevant normative principle is not adequately considered or two principles come into conflict. We searched Pubmed and Google Books for relevant publications. We analysed and synthesized the data using qualitative content analysis.ResultsOur search strategy retrieved 525 references of which 83 were included in the analysis. We identified 86 distinct ethical issues arising in the different phases of the surveillance life-cycle. We further identified 20 distinct conditions that make it more or less justifiable to forego informed consent procedures.ConclusionsThis is the first systematic qualitative review of ethical issues in public health surveillance resulting in a comprehensive ethics matrix that can inform guidelines, reports, strategy papers, and educational material and raise awareness among practitioners.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12889-017-4200-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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