Precision medicine in the genomic era

Abstract Precision medicine as defined by the Precision Medicine Initiative is “an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.” The overarching goal of precision medicine is to yield information that helps us move away from an untargeted “average response” treatment approach to a more personalized and selective approach that aims to increase the benefits and reduce harm. In this chapter, we provide a brief overview of the approaches of precision medicine and examples of the current clinical applications and discuss the challenges associated with its implementation.