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Table 1 Key terms in precision medicine

From: Precision medicine for all? Challenges and opportunities for a precision medicine approach to critical illness

Key term

Description

General

Individualized—Treatments are unique to each individual

Personalized—Treatments prioritize patient needs and preferences

Precision—Treatments optimized for genetics, lifestyle, and environment

Stratified—Setting of patient groups into narrow “strata” by tightly grouped biological features

Grouping

Stratum—Tight groupings of patients defined by similar sets of biological features

Phenotype—Clinical features or traits that characterize a group of patients within a disease or syndrome, including genetics, environmental factors, and other clinically observed characteristics

Group—A portion of a patient population within a larger group showing decreased inter-subject variability and/or different prognosis and behavior of disease from the larger disease population

Sub-grouping

Endotype—Biological subtypes defined by distinct pathophysiologic mechanisms within a phenotype

Subphenotype—Similar to an endotype, but without necessarily showing mechanism or causality

Subtype—A broader term for the division of a patient population by any observable characteristics

Phenotype categories

Prognostic—Indicators used to inform about risks of various outcomes

Predictive—Indicators providing information about the likelihood of response to a given treatment

Drug response—Differential responses to drug based on phenotype defined by an indicator

Device response—Differential responses to device based on phenotype defined by an indicator

Heterogeneity of treatment effects (HTE) and enrichment

HTE—Differences in treatment responses in a group due to variability in drug response phenotype within that group

Enrichment—A prospective strategy for addressing HTE by reducing heterogeneity of the sample population or increasing representation of patients with similar risk profiles