The New Approach to Science: Precision Medicine

Even with ever-increasing knowledge and tools for improved disease diagnosis and treatments, there are still too many diseases where these are not effective. In order to gain better insights into the biological, environmental, and behavioral influences on these diseases, President Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative® (PMI) in January 2015.

Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle. The approach is patient-centric, where biological data for a single individual can help doctors tailor unique and specific treatments to that person. The PMI will support research from human biology, behavior, genetics, environment, data science, and other fields with the goal of developing more effective ways to prolong health and treat disease.