Genomics and Personalized Medicine

Tailoring care to the individual patient is a central goal of medical practice. As new knowledge and technologies develop, clinicians and policy makers have the task of considering how and when they can be used to improve the standard of care. Personal genomic testing offers several potential benefits, including new strategies for risk assessment, improved disease classification, and guidance to improve drug safety and efficacy. But such testing poses potential harms as well, and is often not the most effective strategy for personalizing care. A rigorous approach is needed for evaluating the contributions of genomics to personalized medicine. Key measures of health care quality, including effectiveness, optimality, and equity, are relevant to the task, and point to ways in which personal genomics may pose challenges to health and the health care system.