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Personalized medicine. Precision medicine. Genomic medicine. Individualized medicine. All of these phrases strive to express a similar vision—a reality where physicians treat based on each patient’s unique biology. The concept is poised to revolutionize clinical and preventive care. But even as the technologies helping to birth this new breed of medicine mature, the semantics surrounding the phenomenon are still experiencing growing pains.
So, what should we call it? For a long time, “personalized medicine” was the preferred nomenclature. In the popular press especially, this was (and often still is) the go-to phrase to describe the medical paradigm shift that is underway. But about eight years ago, a committee convened by the director of the National Institutes of Health recommended jettisoning “personalized medicine” and replacing it with “precision medicine.” This term, the committee argued, “is less likely to be misinterpreted as meaning that each patient will ...
