Figure 1.

A vision for how systems biology can meet clinical practice: physicians will collect information on their patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or in the intensive care unit related to variation in symptoms, lung function, biomarkers, structure, quality of life, and other aspects of disease, which can then be integrated with information from environmental and psychosocial factors, using advanced analyses to comprehensively describe behavior over time. This approach enables them to arrive at more objective and precise clinical decisions and treatment strategies and even provide accurate prognostic indicators.