ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces personalised medicine (PM) as a multifaceted and evolving set of practices that promise to transform healthcare by tailoring prevention, diagnosis, and treatment to individual biological profiles. Tracing PM’s emergence from earlier medical traditions, this chapter situates it within longer histories of disease classification, public health, technological innovation, and pharmaceutical development. It examines the role of pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics in popularising PM, highlighting both their successes in targeted therapeutics and their limitations, including issues of equity, cost-effectiveness, and representativeness. This chapter also explores the interplay between PM and related movements such as evidence-based medicine and patient-centred care, noting both synergies and tensions. By framing PM as a socio-technical phenomenon shaped by technological, political, and economic forces, this chapter underscores the need for critical engagement with its promises, assumptions, and potential consequences. It sets the stage for the book’s thematic exploration of data, infrastructures, publics, and treatments, emphasising that a ‘better’ PM must balance technological possibility with social responsibility, equity, and an ethos of care.
