Precision Medicine Research Guide

This guide is for students, faculty, and staff of Rush University who are working in or doing research in Precision Medicine.

Precision Medicine is a personalized approach to physical and mental health care that considers individual factors, such as your environment, lifestyle, and family history in order to develop more tailored treatment and prevention strategies. 

"According to the Precision Medicine Initiative, precision medicine is "an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person." This approach will allow doctors and researchers to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies for a particular disease will work in which groups of people. It is in contrast to a one-size-fits-all approach, in which disease treatment and prevention strategies are developed for the average person, with less consideration for the differences between individuals.

Although the term "precision medicine" is relatively new, the concept has been a part of healthcare for many years. For example, a person who needs a blood transfusion is not given blood from a randomly selected donor; instead, the donor’s blood type is matched to the recipient to reduce the risk of complications. Although examples can be found in several areas of medicine, the role of precision medicine in day-to-day healthcare is relatively limited. Researchers hope that this approach will expand to many areas of health and healthcare in coming years."

Credit: Definition from the NIH National Library of Medicine's Genetics Home Reference, https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/primer/precisionmedicine/definition