The Impact of Precision Medicine in Diabetes: A Multidimensional Perspective

In his State of the Union address on 20 January 2015, President Barack Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative. Although the concept of “precision medicine” has been present for nearly a decade, many interpretations of precision medicine exist. At its core, precision medicine is a model that proposes the custom delivery of health care, with medical practices, testing, decisions, and treatments tailored to the individual patient level (1). Diagnostic tests and therapies are selected on the basis of not only the specific ‘omics signature (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, methylomics, proteomics, methylomics) but also the specific risk factor profile and health history obtained from the electronic health record.In March 2015, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Collins established a working group to develop a plan for creating and managing a collection of 1 million volunteers to comprise a precision medicine research cohort. On 17 September 2015, Dr. Collins accepted the framework that would establish the Precision Medicine Initiative, which includes providing the support to build the infrastructure for recruitment of the cohort, collection of the health data, banking of specimens, and launching research. This initial effort for precision medicine represents a major commitment of funds from the NIH. In this regard, President Obama allocated $215 million in fiscal year 2016 to support the initiative, and $130 million alone was targeted for the research participant cohort.Clearly, the Precision Medicine Initiative ushers in a paradigm change in the way we approach patient care. Specifically, it launches a new era of research, technology, and policy in this area, one in which the participant, the health care practitioner, and research merge into an individual-level relationship focused on the maintenance of health and the prevention and treatment of common human diseases. But, given that the editorial team at Diabetes Care desires to provide the most …