Table 1.
Current and Emerging Terminology, Paradigms in Genomic Health Care
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Genomic medicine | “Emerging medical discipline that involves using genomic information about an individual as part of their clinical care (e.g., for diagnostic or therapeutic decision-making) and the health outcomes and policy implications of that clinical use.”16 |
| Network medicine | “Emerging field that combines systems biology and network science. It runs counter to the prevailing scientific reductionist trend that dominates current medical research on disease etiology and treatment. Reductionism relies on single molecules or single genes to provide comprehensive and robust insights into the pathophysiology of complex diseases. Similarly, current drug development methodologies target single molecules that very frequently fail because of the unforeseen and unintended effects that result from the application of this piecemeal approach to pharmacology. Emphasizes a more holistic approach through the identification and investigation of networks of interacting molecular and cellular components. When network medicine is integrated into biomedical research, it has the potential to transform investigations of disease etiology, diagnosis, and treatment.”11,17 |
| Personalized medicine | “Emerging practice of medicine that uses an individual's genetic profile to guide decisions made in regard to the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of disease. Knowledge of a patient's genetic profile can help doctors select the proper medication or therapy and administer it using the proper dose or regimen.”18 |
| Precision medicine | “An emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person.”1 In cancer, precision medicine “uses specific information about a person's tumor to help diagnose, plan treatment, find out how well treatment is working, or make a prognosis.”19 |
| Systems medicine | “New and emerging field that leverages complex computational tools to develop personalized assessments of disease risk and potential management options. Systems medicine seeks to enhance individualized diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment options. The introduction of Big Data has begun to require new types of physicians and biomedical scientists, which exploit modern computational sciences to process and analyze enormous quantities of information.”9,10,20 |
| Precision health | “Precision health is broader—it includes precision medicine but also approaches that occur outside the setting of a doctor's office or hospital, such as disease prevention and health promotion activities.” This includes using targeted health information from patients' wearable sensors, implantable monitoring devices, and mobile devices for health prevention interventions.”21 |
| Precision public health | “Improving the ability to prevent disease, promote health, and reduce health disparities in populations by applying emerging methods and technologies for measuring disease, pathogens, exposures, behaviors, and susceptibility in populations; and developing policies and targeted implementation programs to improve health.”22 |