You go to the doctor and you feel good. He takes samples of your bodily fluids and afterwards he reveals a disease - before its first symptoms even occur. Your current diagnosis will be cured by a medication "tailor made" just for you. It will cure the initial phases of your disease and heal you with no or minimal side effects. The doctor will also tell you what other diseases are imminent in short and even long term and what to do with it in the meantime. You are going to find out whether your diet is optimal for you, or whether you should change it and how. You will clearly know which medication will be useful for you and which won't be helpful at all. This will be the end of the trial and error methods, which are common in contemporary medicine.
 

However, this is still not enough. We need more than just a cure - we need to stop aging. We want to reprogram our genes and DNA, so that our body with all the organs will be restored. Does is sound unbelievable? It doesn't. This is the reality of near future where cancer will be less of a problem than it is today with asthma or eczema. Studies of the world-renowned scientist, author of the bestseller “Personalized Medicine Revolution” but above all, the top expert in the field of personalized medicine and the Director of the University of British Columbia Institute of Medical Sciences Pieter Cullis prove it. "Today, people are cured when they are sick and it often happens to be too late. Preventive medicine will dominate in five or ten years. Pieter Cullis says that people will therefore live longer and health care, thanks to personalized medicine will fundamentally change soon. For the first time we have, thanks to the digitalization, real instruments, how to understand what is going on in our bodies. 

This also applies to treatment. The fact is that at present, the therapy is not particularly adapted to human beings despite that each of us is different. Treatment either helps us, has no effects or even hurts, depending on a person. However, today we are at the initial stage of a major revolution in medicine. It not only can predict the disease even before its symptoms appear, but it will also establish a standard, that the same medication will no longer be applied to cure the same disease.

This is a unique opportunity to listen to the results of the work of Pietro Cullis and get to know him. The acclaimed scientist will be in Slovakia for the first time to attend the International Congress ITAPA on November 14 -15, 2016 in Crowne Plaza Hotel in Bratislava. He will speak together with a number of other experts on the direction, which the diagnostics and treatment of diseases will take in the upcoming years. 

Who is Dr. Pieter Cullis, Ph.D.: Peter Cullis is director of Life Sciences Institute (University of British Columbia, UBC), Professor of Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Chair of the Personalized Medicine Initiative and Director of NanoMedicines Research Group, UBC. Dr. Cullis and co-workers were responsible for fundamental improvement of generation, loading and targeting of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) systems for intravenous delivery of small molecule drugs and macromolecular drugs such as small interfering RNA (siRNA). This work has contributed to three new drugs that have been approved by regulatory agencies in the U.S. and Europe for the treatment of cancer and its complications. Dr. Cullis co-founded ten biotechnology companies, published over 300 scientific articles and owns over 60 patents. In 2012 he co-founded BC Personalized Medicine Initiative, which nowadays runs 10 projects for implementing molecularly based medicine into clinical practice in British Columbia. Dr. Cullis received many awards and in 2004 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. In 2011 he was awarded by the Prix Galien, Canada’s premier prize for achievements in pharmaceutical research and development. In 2015 Dr. Cullis published a book “The Personalized Medicine Revolution: How Diagnosing and Treating Disease are About to Change Forever”

Many projects have been launched in Slovakia in the past one or two years. However, they haven't become a common part of our lives, and few have used its outputs. To a large extent this is caused by its useless complexity and opacity. Let's take the electronic signature as an example. The vast majority of important services would unavailable without it. It however requires installation of various applications in order to use it. For the common people this is way too difficult. Therefore, the main trend of the moment is to Make IT easy! It is also the main idea of this year's ITAPA congress - how can IT technologies make our lives and the whole world simpler. This also applies to areas where we wouldn't expect it — for example, in healthcare simplification. The objective is to get rid of forms and literally get what we want in three clicks instead, so that we don't have to face the hassle delivering data already possessed by the state institutions.

ITAPA events (Information Technology and Public Administration) has been bringing new ideas and inspiration for the Slovak eGovernment for already 15 years, and has become the ultimate congress-discussion platform not only for the IT community. The cycle of ITAPA events with regular patronage of state representatives consists of a number of prestigious events. The most important ones include the spring season ITAPA, which specializes in local or European topics and the fall season two-day ITAPA international congress. The later focuses on the support of latest trends and solutions in eGovernment and digitalization of the society from around the world, and ranks among the most important events of its kind. The objective of ITAPA is to create an independent platform on which the key representatives of state and business can discuss and present inspiring ideas and projects from the field of digitalization of society. Dozens of renowned Slovak and international speakers, hundreds of guests and media join the conference every year.