In the words of the National Institute of Health, precision medicine is an approach to disease treatment and prevention that accounts for individual variability in genes, environment and lifestyle. In simpler terms, precision medicine means using a tailored treatment approach for each person based on their actual disease, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach. The aim of President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) is to make this type of healthcare the norm rather than the exception. There’s no doubt this is the future of medicine.  Since it was announced in January, PMI has received a ton of press, however many patients and advocates still have questions about how it actually works.
Last week we took part in a Precision Medicine Initiative Tweet chat hosted by the National Institute of Health (@NIH) to help field some of these questions. The discussion was moderated by Kathy Hudson (@KathyHudsonNIH), NIH Deputy Director for Science, Outreach and Policy, and DJ Patil (@dj44), U.S. Chief Data Scientist at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Here are some of the highlights:

What is precision medicine and why does it matter?

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsPersonal experiences with precision medicine as a patient or provider

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//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsWhere will the data come from?

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What work still needs to be done?

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More reading

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Read the full transcript here and follow the growing conversation using #PMINetwork on Twitter. Have a question or comment you didn’t get to contribute? Please post in the comments below.