On completion of this module students will:

Know that modern medicine is facing a personalised information deluge. The scale of available data increases greatly the number of medical hypotheses worth testing. However, traditional means of establishing evidence-based strategies for managing patients are not scaling in proportion.

Know that routine genotyping and sequencing will transform the management of serious inherited genetic diseases from being driven primarily by the phenotype to being driven primarily by the genotype.

Know that pronounced somatic genetic differences among cancers are leading to stratified or precision medicine approaches. These take the tumour genetic background into account. However the high levels of inter and intra-individual heterogeneity of cancer and the ability of cancers to evolve resistance against variable components of the cancer phenotype present challenges to this approach.

Know that in many complex diseases, inherited genotypic variation is frequently difficult to incorporate usefully into clinical practise, while molecular analysis of phenotypic subtypes (RNA and protein) will lead to some specific advances in the near future.

Appreciate some of the practicalities of analysing large molecular datasets of clinical data, and how to tackle the problems of multiple correction for many statistical hypotheses.

Have further developed their skills in making a scientifically supported case for a proposal, and in critiquing their own and other people’s interpretations, through a debate format.

Prior experience of biology to degree level (biology or medicine degree) including an understanding of DNA, RNA, protein sequences and functions.

• Feedback individually to students, on an activity or draft prior to summative assessment

Feedback on the initial written debate contributions is provided individually and also during group discussions, before final submission is submitted.