Table 1.
Variety of definitions of ‘precision medicine’ and ‘personalised medicine’— examples
| Concept | Year | Authors, journal/source | Discipline (Scopus)* | Definition |
| Precision medicine | 2017 | Marson et al, Frontiers in Pharmacology 32 | Medicine: pharmacology; pharmacology, toxicology, pharmaceutics: pharmacology |
In precision medicine, the individual is understood “as a response to the interrelation between environment, lifestyle, and genetic factors”. |
| 2020 | Elemento, Emerging Topics in Life Sciences 33 | Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology: general biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology | Precision medicine is “personalized medicine enhanced by technology”. | |
| 2020 | Ho et al, Trends in Biotechnology 34 | Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology: biotechnology; chemical engineering: bioengineering |
“From an engineering perspective, precision medicine involves the use of technologies to acquire and validate population-wise data, such as omics-based single-cell analysis and biomarker discovery, for subsequent application on the individual patient level.” | |
| 2021 | Ong et al, Asian Bioethics Review 35 | Arts and humanities: philosophy; social sciences: health; medicine: health policy |
“Precision medicine (PM) aims to improve healthcare with the use of genomic analyses and data analytics to develop tailored approaches to predicting disease progression and treatment responses for individual patients.” | |
| 2021 | US National Library of Medicine36 | (Medicine) | “Clinical, therapeutic and diagnostic approaches to optimal disease management based on individual variations in a patient’s genetic profile.” | |
| Personalised medicine | 2013 | Schleidgen et al, BMC Medical Ethics 5 | Nursing: ethics and legal aspects; social sciences: health; medicine: health policy |
Personalized medicine “is not medicine with a special focus on the interests and preferences of the individual patient” and it “is not related to the term patient-centered medicine”. |
| 2017 | Marson et al, Frontiers in Pharmacology 32 | Medicine: pharmacology; pharmacology, toxicology, pharmaceutics: pharmacology |
Personalized medicine is “the treatment directed at the symptoms, and this treatment is adjusted depending on the patient’s phenotype”. | |
| 2015/2020 | Council of the European Union/European Commission9 13 | (Health policy) | ”Personalised medicine refers to a medical model using characterisation of individuals' phenotypes and genotypes (eg, molecular profiling, medical imaging, lifestyle data) for tailoring the right therapeutic strategy for the right person at the right time, and/or to determine the predisposition to disease and/or to deliver timely and targeted prevention. Personalised medicine relates to the broader concept of patient-centred care, which takes into account that, in general, healthcare systems need to better respond to patient needs.” | |
| 2020 | Ho et al, Trends in Biotechnology 34 | Biochemistry, genetics and molecular biology: biotechnology; chemical engineering: bioengineering |
“Personalized medicine involves the use of technologies to seriously acquire and assess an individual’s own data for only their own treatment. For example, this may involve the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to both design a drug combination based on a patient’s own biopsy and follow with N-of-1 dosing protocols.” | |
| 2021 | Fournier et al, Journal of Personalized Medicine 14 | Medicine: medicine (miscellaneous) | “PM seems to have a wide scope, encompassing many practices, including targeted therapies (TT)… It seems there are several terms used to name PM… Indeed, it is possible to define PM as 'targeted therapy', 'pharmacogenomics' or 'precision medicine' depending on the author, the domain or the definition“… |
*For discipline categorisation, the ‘source details’ in Scopus are used for information on the respective journals (www.scopus.com).