Personalized medicine: a patient - centered paradigm

Excerpt

An editorial about personalized medicine should perhaps start with a definition. Although several versions of such definition exist, we pay homage here to the oldest definition reported in modern medical literature. Sir William Osler (1849-1919) recognized that "variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions we know as disease". Modern day medicine recognized this fact and implemented its ethos since inception of its practice separating it from a general "one-size-fits-all" approach. A medical doctor would ask the patient about his/her suffering and prescribe a treatment suited to the patient's condition. Individualized evaluation and treatments, which include history taking, focused examination and specific laboratory and medical tests have now become routine in day-to-day medical practice. Personalized medicine, takes into account the needs of individual patients, and provides custom-tailored therapeutic approaches. …