Departing Thoughts

Abstract The future of precision health care is being driven by the increasingly rapid evolution of technologies. Often, technology advances so quickly and is applied so eagerly that we neglect to comprehend or even take time to identify limitations and ethical implications. This leads to some of the uncertainties that pervade precision medicine. Coping with current and future technologies and their applications requires more than pronouncements and guidelines from academicians and learned societies. An imperative must be improving data literacy, defined as the ability to comprehend, clarify, and employ information in a data-driven world. By emphasizing some of the uncertainties attendant to our march toward precision medicine, I trust I have not contributed in even the slightest to the regrettable efforts by some to engender distrust of science. Nothing could be further from my intent. I am convinced that science and its technologic imperatives will answer many of the health care concerns of all humans.