Scientific horizons in cancer control: genomes, informatics and personalized medicine.

The goals of cancer control are to reduce cancer risk, detect cancers earlier, improve treatments and enhance the health of cancer survivors. Personalized medicine aims to customize health care by tailoring care to the individual patient using genetic and other information. This review considers the traditional strengths of Connecticut's cancer control program as well as trends in emerging science, primarily under development through the auspices of the National Cancer Institute's Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences. It focuses on resources for cancer control offered by the Connecticut Tumor Registry in addition to opportunities for improving cancer control through developments in informatics and cancer genomics. It provides an overview of the use of informatic tools, electronic health records, health information exchange, integration of genotyping into risk models, and genomic analyses of clinical tumor specimens, demonstrating how the common theme in these advances will lead toward more personalized cancer control.