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Table 3 Qualifying terms analogous to precision medicine with verbatim definitions

From: Qualifying and quantifying the precision medicine rhetoric

Initial search terms

Precision or personalized medicine (initiative or study)

Precision medicine and personalized medicine: tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient … the ability to classify individuals into subpopulations that differ in their susceptibility to a particular disease, in the biology and/or prognosis of those diseases they may develop, or in their response to a specific treatment … [2]

Personalized medicine: improvements in the stratification and timing of health care by utilizing biological information and biomarkers on the level of molecular disease pathways, genetics, proteomics, and metabolomics [29]

Secondary search terms

Precision medicine (initiative) [country]

Terms discovered through literature that often relate to or are used in place of precision medicine

Genomic medicine: clinical care based on genomic information [30]

Individualized medicine: medicine that is particularized to a human being [31]

Evidence-based medicine: conscientious, explicit, and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients [32]

Stratified medicine: approach of proactively testing and selecting populations for specific treatments [33]

Big data: high-volume, high-velocity and/or high-variety information assets that enable enhanced insight, decision making, and process automation [34]

Translational medicine: an interdisciplinary branch of the biomedical field supported by three main pillars: benchside, bedside, and the community; the goal is to combine disciplines, resources, expertise, and techniques within these pillars to promote enhancements in prevention, diagnosis, and therapies [35]

P4 medicine: a systems approach to medicine that includes predictive, personalized, preventive, and participatory aspects; a revolution that is fueled by an appreciation for medicine as an information science, a holistic approach to studying the complexities of disease, emerging technologies that allow us to explore new dimensions of patient data space, and powerful new analytic technologies [36]