Precision Medicine Versus Personalized Medicine

Precision refers to a mode of action, being exact and accurate, while personalized refers to attention to an individual person. Optimally treatment should be both precise and personalized. Each individual is different. Patients live in a very complex social, civic, cultural, economic, religious, and philosophic environment. Treating physicians must understand and diagnose the cause of the patient’s symptoms and illness in as much detail as possible. They also must understand the person and the milieu. A very detailed history, physical and neurological examination, laboratory testing, and technological advances in brain and vascular imaging now make it possible for physicians to acquire the data needed to be able to direct management to complex individual patients. Randomized trials, the basis of the so-called evidence-based medicine, yield general information but often do not provide a road map to treat individual patients.