ABSTRACT
The practice of medicine today remains largely empirical. Physicians generally rely on pattern matching to establish the diagnosis based on a combination of the patient’s medical history, physical examination, and laboratory data. Thus, the treatment is often based on the physician’s past experience with similar patients, so typically a blockbuster drug gets prescribed for the typical patient for that specic disease. According to this paradigm, treatment decision is driven by a trial-and-error approach. Thus, the patient becomes the victim of side effects for a drug that works in the majority of people affected by that specic disease. The use of biomarkers (BMs) is going to enable a signicant paradigm shift from empirical medicine to precision medicine. It is conceivable that in the immediate future, we will be moving away from the concept of “one size ts all” but rather will be shifting to a precision medicine approach where the right medicine, for the right patient, at the right dose, and at the right time, will be prescribed. As a result of it, we will improve patient care and reduce the health-care cost and potential side effects.
