Obama promotes precision medicine

At the White House Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Summit on Thursday, President Obama promoted precision medicine as a tool for improving and reducing the cost of healthcare. "What we are now seeing is the possibility of identifying diseases, targeting them, individualizing treatments for a particular patient, and operating with the kind of precision that promises to reduce costs, provide much better care, make our entire healthcare system much more effective," Obama said.

Obama also suggested it may be necessary for the government to "subsidize drugs that are really effective for a small group of people" and to "create markets" for drugs targeted at very small populations. He predicted that the costs of precision medicine will be offset by improving health and reducing use of ineffective treatments. "Over the long term we can save a lot of money, rather than make this more expensive, if every drug we prescribe actually works." ...