EPMA Journal - Q&A with the Editor in Chief

In this Q&A, Prof Dr Olga Golubnitschaja (this opens in a new tab), Editor-in-Chief, joins us to discuss the developments in the field of 3P medicine and the impact that the EPMA Journal has had over the last decade. Prof Golubnitschaja also shares with us her latest research and thoughts on how 3PM will continue to develop in the coming years.

Q: EPMA Journal published its first issue (this opens in a new tab) in 2010. As the founding Editor-in-Chief, can you tell us about how the journal has developed over the decade?

The creation of the EPMA Journal was a success story from the very beginning. The release of the first journal issues occurred within the active preparatory phase of the European Programme “Horizon 2020 (this opens in a new tab).” The revolutionising EPMA concepts of the paradigm change from reactive to predictive, preventive and personalised medicine being in focus of the EPMA Journal were fully reflected by early journal issues. It has also strongly contributed to corresponding concepts and calls released later on by the “Horizon 2020,” specifically for innovative bio/medical fields (this opens in a new tab).

Since then, the journal policy remained the same, namely to elaborate on each publication individually prioritising quality but not quantity, and making each article highly representative for the unique publishing niche of predictive preventive and personalised medicine (3PM / PPPM). This strategy resulted in the evident journal success:

• being currently ranked within the top 2 % in the category “Health policy (this opens in a new tab)” by Scopus (CiteScore 2020 – 9.0 (this opens in a new tab)) and
• demonstrating high level of international collaboration (>50% in 2018) that is crucial for the validity of the published data – see actual evaluation by SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) (this opens in a new tab).

Q: What impact has the EPMA Journal had on the field of Predictive, Preventive and Personalised (3P) Medicine?

The EPMA Journal’s publishing philosophy is that all strategies of the EPMA professional network and 3PM innovation have to be fully transparent for the world. Research and strategic articles published in Open Access (this opens in a new tab) are freely accessible for readers of any socio-economic status worldwide following the principles of promoting high quality medical care, promotion of international partnerships and equality proclaimed amongst the main goals of the UNO. Currently the EPMA-network (this opens in a new tab) of 54 countries worldwide actively promote to the field of 3PM. 

Due to the extensive promotion of the unique publishing niche “Predictive, Preventive and Personalised Medicine” and its scientific excellence, an exponential growth of scientific publications was achieved starting with very few articles published in 2008 (the year of the EPMA registration) that evidently has shaped the bio/medical research in the early 21^st century – see PubMed diagram (this opens in a new tab).

Q: In addition to being the Editor-in-Chief of EPMA Journal, you are also Head of the world’s first 3P Medicine unit at University Hospital Bonn. Could you tell us about your latest research (this opens in a new tab) and why it’s important?

Certainly, both of my duties go “hand-in-hand” aiming at translational research in predictive diagnostics, targeted prevention and personalisation of medical services. This benefits not only the scientific world but also patients and society at large. Concepts of 3P medicine are valid for and applicable to the following:

• Primary medical care relevant for healthy individuals and individuals in sub-optimal health conditions with reversibly damaged heath status (e.g. voice perturbations under stress overload (this opens in a new tab), risks associated with stroke predisposition (this opens in a new tab), and vaginal dryness (this opens in a new tab))
• Secondary medical care relevant for cascading pathologies (e.g. chronic inflammation (this opens in a new tab))
• Tertiary medical care relevant for making palliative medicine to healthcare of chronic diseases (e.g. palliative treatment of liver malignancies (this opens in a new tab)) 

Particularly under COVID-19 pandemic conditions, it is becoming clearer that to save lives and to be cost-effective, translational research, policy-making, and medical care act hand-in-hand – all have to follow principles of evidence-based prediction, targeted prevention and treatments tailored to individualised patient profiles, i.e. 3P medicine. With internationally accumulated 3PM expertise, pandemics are certainly preventable with corresponding scenarios carrying predictive character:

• Lessons for global epidemics on the context of 3PM strategies (this opens in a new tab)
• Social machines and connected devies in pandemic management

However, once a pandemic escalated, over couple of months or several years being essentially focused on acutely affected individuals, we are not allowed to neglect needs of chronically diseased patients as well as individuals in sub-optimal health conditions (this opens in a new tab) – these deficits may cost human lives over the next couple of decades and create tremendous economic burden.

To avoid this scenario, 3PM expertise of well-consolidated multi-professional EPMA network is essential.

Q: What are your expectations for the future of this research?

Currently, applied “reactive” medical services are cost-ineffective and frequently unsatisfactory for the patient needs and society at large, such as with pregnancy associated breast cancer (this opens in a new tab).

Contextually, there are no doubts that 3PM will increasingly shape the bio/medical research in the 21^st century (this opens in a new tab) being already broadly acknowledged as the “medicine of the future.” We have already seen ground-breaking scientific findings (this opens in a new tab) that could help humanity and protect our planet, namely in Medicine and Public Health (this opens in a new tab). And, there are still discoveries to be made. Multi-disciplinary character of the branch will expand for evolving 3PM industrialisation and deep penetration of artificial intelligence into daily medical practice in favour of cost-effective predictive medical approaches (this opens in a new tab).

Q: And finally, how do you see 3P medicine developing over the next decade?

To describe the next decade of the 3PM development, I would use below listed items as well as strategic and research articles released by the EPMA Journal supporting my prognosis:

- 3PM research focuses shifted towards translation into daily medical practice
- patient stratification utilising individualised multi-parametric analysis (this opens in a new tab)
- increasing 3PM literacy in the population
- artificial intelligence driven patient self-care (this opens in a new tab) expanding market of corresponding products and services

Prof Olga Golubnitschaja is the Editor in Chief of the EPMA Journal. She is also the head of the world's first Predictive, Preventive and Personalised (3P) Medicine unit at the Department of Radiation Oncology, University Hospital Bonn, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany. 

Want to learn more about her and her research? Click here (this opens in a new tab) to read her profile!