Population and Personalized Medicine in the Modern Era - JAMA Op-ed

Although conversations used to begin by pitting population vs personalized medicine, improved data capture and data sources have the potential to support population and personalized medicine that more aptly defines the roadmap for the future. There are times when the data will suggest that broadly treating a population uniformly will be optimal, particularly when the disease state is prevalent, the risk of adverse outcomes is high, and serious adverse effects of the intervention are infrequent. However, personalizing therapies will be better in other scenarios to optimize benefit and reduce risk. Studying a population and characterizing individuals simultaneously will become routine. Researchers and clinicians must be vigilant in applying the best analytic techniques to better understand the complex interactions that influence human health and disease and to select therapies based on the clinical circumstances.

Currently, the discussions around wearables, population tracking, and the quantified self movement within medicine are very polarized. This op-ed reminds us that the world is grey as opposed to black or white.