UC Davis Center for Precision Medicine and Data Sciences

The approach to medicine is rapidly changing. People are individuals and have characteristics that make them unique. The one size fits all approach and standard of care mindset for treatment is becoming obsolete. Precision Medicine realizes these differences and convenes teams of professionals to create innovative targeted therapies for patients, providing the right treatment to the right person at the right time. Imagine, 2 people have the same illness and traditionally get the same treatment. One person gets better, but the other one does not. Why is this? Both received the same treatment, so shouldn’t both get better? Precision Medicine will look at the individual. It will assemble a team of professionals from different professional backgrounds to look at the different characteristics that make up the individual. It looks at the person’s phenotype, for example, the age, BMI, race, etc. It looks at a variety of other seemingly unconnected characteristics. Does the person have a mutation in their genetic make up that makes them not respond to treatment? What is the person’s environment like? Are they exposed to a lot of pollution? Do they have access to care facilities? Do they have any addictions? All these, among other factors can be taken into account when looking at the best treatment pathway for the individual. Precision Medicine also makes use of Big Data. The National Precision Medicine Initiative ( All of Us Study) aims to collect data from millions of participating individuals and to help researchers find patterns and other individuals with similar characteristics who have similar illnesses, and see what worked for them. This will help with illness prevention due to the fact that in comparing those with similar characteristics, we can see what afflictions those similar populations are susceptible to. With Precision Medicine, we will have the ability make medicine Predictive, Participatory, Preventative, and Personalized.