Precision Medicine

What is Precision Medicine?

For years, doctors and caregivers adapted their recommendations for disease prevention and treatment to account for a wide range of people. But what if there was a more innovative method that was tailored to fit an individual? Precision medicine takes a more personalized approach to health by incorporating an individual’s genes, environment, and lifestyle to determine their risk for disease, preventive activities to help them avoid disease, and course of treatment after diagnosis. 

Precision medicine has notably and most often been applied in relation to select cancers; however, ongoing initiatives and regulatory attention aim to pave the way for its broader application to other diseases—including in the modernization of newborn screening and the study of individual biological responses to food and dietary routines. This work requires expertise in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, the microbiome, and biomarker discovery to understand how diseases affect health on an individualized level.    

Embracing Health Personalization Through Precision Medicine Research

With the knowledge and understanding that there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to healthcare, RTI International works on initiatives like the Nutrition for Precision Health study—in partnership with the National Institutes of Health—to learn more about the impact of nutrition on health and to help providers create healthy, precise, and effective diet plans for their patients.   

Learn more about how RTI and our partners are supplying clinicians with the tools needed to predict which treatments will be most effective in coordination with an individual’s genetic profile.