Who - better than he - could have made the human dimension of the patient any clearer after the substantive debate over the seemingly endless possibilities of personalized medicine? Does a patient really consist merely of a gene sequence? How important are less measurable quantities such as fear and hope or self-motivation for someone whose illness has thrust him into a particularly emotional situation, perhaps the most difficult time of his life?

How important is the "value" of trust a patient puts in a therapy, a clinical trial, a doctor and his medical assistants for therapeutic success? How can this trust be engendered and strengthened? How much time does trust require?

If one applied this to the special area of patient recruitment for clinical trials, this could mean: informative and at the same time sensitive and respectful communications as well as the corresponding development of the necessary tools are very important for the patient to make the most informed decision about whether to participate in a clinical trial or not. We need highly sensitive communications in dealing with each patient and the doctors – that is the development of professional, customized tools involved in the given clinical study - precisely because the approach of personalized medicine requires genotype information, for example.

We should therefore not limit our view only to the factual and extremely exciting possibilities of personalized medicine, but also consider the human dimension of the patient in all matters - even in patient recruitment.

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