ABSTRACT
Personalised medicine involves new ways of classifying and stratifying people, in terms of both existing conditions and behaviours, and especially predicted risk of future illness. Personalisation operates through an ever-changing range of technologies, especially genetic/genomic information and digital “big data” sets. “Personalisation” describes the location of persons as “individual data points” through a nexus of correlations with large population-level data sets, and to an accompanying evocation of individual moral responsibility to internalise and act on the identities created through these correlations. A range of personalised medicine projects are currently underway across the world, from public and private projects to generate ever-larger data sets to the growing market for individual genetic testing through direct-to-consumer services. These activities are animated by a set of interlinked promises; to deliver cheaper more accurate healthcare, to create new market opportunities, and to improve patient outcomes. However, the implementation of personalised medicine initiatives threatens to introduce new currents of individualisation, undermining solidarity and social cohesion, and further marginalising those not represented in large data sets, who do not meet the new standards for normality produced by personalised medicine, or who lack the economic and social capital to respond to the imperative to purchase new products and services to sustain one’s health.
