Annual Wade Lecture Event

Stephen T Holgate CBE, FMedSci, Medical Research Council Clinical Professor of Immunopharmacology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Southampton.

In 1892, William Osler published the "Principles and Practice of Medicine" which has served us well for over 130 years in delivering healthcare based upon individual descriptions and patterns of symptoms, signs and pathology. In 1971, the creation of a new teaching hospital in Southampton further built on these principles by promoting the integration of science and clinical medicine into medical teaching to be adopted nationwide. We are now on the threshold of a third transformation: the era of personalised, stratified or precision medicine. Application of sophisticated biological technologies and informatics to the challenges of complex inflammatory, degenerative and malignant disease is revealing novel molecular pathways and networks. Never before has there been a more exciting time in medicine as the mysteries of elusive diseases become unravelled and new approaches to prevention and treatment emerge. Of greatest significance is that this new approach places the individual citizen across their lifecourse at the centre of this healthcare revolution.