TY - JOUR T1 - What is precision medicine? JF - European Respiratory Journal JO - Eur Respir J DO - 10.1183/13993003.00391-2017 VL - 50 IS - 4 SP - 1700391 AU - Inke R. König AU - Oliver Fuchs AU - Gesine Hansen AU - Erika von Mutius AU - Matthias V. Kopp Y1 - 2017/10/01 UR - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/50/4/1700391.abstract N2 - The term “precision medicine” has become very popular over recent years, fuelled by scientific as well as political perspectives. Despite its popularity, its exact meaning, and how it is different from other popular terms such as “stratified medicine”, “targeted therapy” or “deep phenotyping” remains unclear. Commonly applied definitions focus on the stratification of patients, sometimes referred to as a novel taxonomy, and this is derived using large-scale data including clinical, lifestyle, genetic and further biomarker information, thus going beyond the classical “signs-and-symptoms” approach.While these aspects are relevant, this description leaves open a number of questions. For example, when does precision medicine begin? In which way does the stratification of patients translate into better healthcare? And can precision medicine be viewed as the end-point of a novel stratification of patients, as implied, or is it rather a greater whole?To clarify this, the aim of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive definition that focuses on precision medicine as a process. It will be shown that this proposed framework incorporates the derivation of novel taxonomies and their role in healthcare as part of the cycle, but also covers related terms.Precision medicine is defined as a process involving the derivation of novel taxonomies based on deep phenotyping http://ow.ly/WHna30dNNOZ ER -