Uncertain Precision: Managing Health Care with Personalized Technologies

The future of precision health care is being driven by the increasingly rapid evolution of technologies. Over the past century, health care has benefited tremendously from the steady introduction of new tools, such as imaging, vaccines, immunology, biochemical analysis, and drug development; more recently, emerging technologies have arisen rapidly, undergone swift validation, and experienced prompt application. However, these technologies and their results have uncertainties and impact all facets of precision patient management.

Uncertain Precision: Managing Health Care with Personalized Technologies provides an in-depth overview of precision medicine and its relationship with new technology, examining its current scope, benefits, and limitations. While new medical technologies can identify many individual traits that establish diagnoses, predict the course of illness, and recommend therapies, the tools and their results have uncertainties that the health care professional must anticipate and recognize.

Utilizing clinical examples from his own experience and insights from colleagues and other experts, Dr. Reed E. Pyeritz discusses key technologies, such as genome sequencing, artificial intelligence, targeting a patient's immune cells to cancer, and gene therapies. Timely and compelling, Uncertain Precision is an essential resource for anyone interested in the future of health care and the role of precision medicine in delivering tailored medical solutions.

Reed E. Pyeritz is the William Smilow Professor of Medicine and Genetics, Emeritus, at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He received his B.S. from the University of Delaware, a Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Harvard University, and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School. His clinical practice focuses on adults with hereditary disorders, especially of the cardiovascular system. His research contributed to the lifespan of people with Marfan syndrome improving from the mid-forties to the seventies. Long interested in medical economics and ethics, he has studied the professional obligations of providers of genetics services and the financial influences that limit access. He has published over 700 research studies, reviews, and chapters, and co-edits Principles and Practice of Medical Genetics and Genomics.