Translating Precision

Precision medicine is based on a simple precept that deep information about an individual patient can be used to guide his or her healthcare. In the not-too-distant future, clinicians may have point-of-care access to an individual’s entire genome, dense data captured from wearable devices, and informatics tools that aggregate data from clinical experience to allow for real-time decision support. The innovative technologies being developed in pursuit of precision medicine afford researchers and clinicians the opportunity to generate and consume information at an unprecedented scale. At the same time, the translational lifecycle from bench-to-bedside is shortening. In this context, translational research has never been more integral and directly linked to patient care. As such, this issue of Clinical and Translational Science explores some essential themes in the field of precision medicine: reproducibility in research, modalities to experimentally validate markers of disease, and development considerations for the medical products used in practice.