From therapeutic drug monitoring to total drug monitoring and drug-omics

Abstract

In view of the role of pharmacotherapy in medicine, on the one hand, and the powerful technical possibilities that are now available on the other hand, therapeutic drug monitoring is a surprisingly neglected area of laboratory medicine. In this viewpoint article, an "omics approach"to pharmacovigilance and drug monitoring is proposed and discussed. A realistic goal for laboratory medicine in the 21st century should indeed be to enable clinicians to check whether the right drug is present in the right patient with an appropriate blood concentration for each compound.