Personalized Medicine Cannot Always Be Precise, but Precision Medicine Must Always Be Personalized

Abstract Personalized health care originated in antiquity. The obligations intrinsic to personalization are embedded in the oaths to which physicians swear as they embark on their careers. The evolution of technologies that enable defining people at fundamental biologic levels has been subsumed in what people and their health care providers consider personalization. However, employing technologies to define people, in both health and disease, is better termed precision health care. My foundational thesis is that personalized medicine should be as precise as possible, and all aspects of precision medicine must be personalized. Understanding and applying technologies that enable precision are the responsibility of all health care professionals.