Dr Leonard Fromer on Personalized Versus Precision Medicine

Personalized medicine looks at a patient’s genome, but precision medicine takes more of their social and individual determinants into account, said Leonard M. Fromer, MD, FAAFP, executive medical director of the Group Practice Forum.

Transcript (slightly modified)

What is the difference between personalized medicine and precision medicine?

Historically, when we talked about individualizing treatment for patients we called it personalized medicine. And when that was happening, everybody focused on the genomics of it: how did the patient’s genome impact what they needed in terms of diagnosis and treatment? And what grew out of that was this precision medicine concept.

It has now been embedded in what the president has proposed and the federal government is pursuing in terms of a precision medicine initiative. And what it does is, it takes into account not just the genomics, but adds in for each individual person all of the other drivers around their uniqueness. Pretty much, a lot about the social determinants of patients’ health outcomes. And all of the inputs get put together into a model of what’s different about that patient, what’s unique, and that we have to approach each patient in that unique way to be precise, to deliver precision diagnosis and precision intervention, to help that patient get the best results.