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Table 1 Definitions of terms related to personalised medicine

From: Medical imaging in personalised medicine: a white paper of the research committee of the European Society of Radiology (ESR)

Personalised medicine

 • According to Wikipedia, "Personalized medicine is a medical model that proposes the customization of healthcare using molecular analysis—with medical decisions, practices, and/or products being tailored to the individual patient. In this model, diagnostic testing is often employed for selecting appropriate and optimal therapies based on the context of a patient’s genetic content. The use of genetic information has played a major role in certain aspects of personalised medicine and the term was first coined in the context of genetics, though it has since broadened to encompass all sorts of personalization measures" [104]

 • The US National Human Genome Research Institute defines personalised medicine as an emerging practice of medicine that uses an individual’s genetic profile to guide decisions made in regard to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of disease. Knowledge of a patient’s genetic profile can help doctors select the proper medication or therapy and administer it using the proper dose or regimen [105]

 • The US National Cancer institute describes personalised medicine as a form of medicine that uses information about a person’s genes, proteins, and environment to prevent, diagnose, and treat disease. In cancer, personalised medicine uses specific information about a person’s tumour to help diagnose, plan treatment, find out how well treatment is working, or make a prognosis. Also called precision medicine [106]

 • European Science Foundation: Personalised medicine can be broadly described as a customisation of healthcare that accommodates individual differences as far as possible at all stages in the process, from prevention, through diagnosis and treatment, to post-treatment follow-up [3]

 • National Academy of Sciences: Precision medicine refers to the tailoring of medical treatment to the individual characteristics of each patient. It does not literally mean the creation of drugs or medical devices that are unique to a patient, but rather 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. Preventive or therapeutic interventions can then be concentrated on those who will benefit, sparing expense and side effects for those who will not. Although the term “personalised medicine” is also used to convey this meaning, that term is sometimes misinterpreted as implying that unique treatments can be designed for each individual. For this reason, the Committee thinks that the term “precision medicine” is preferable to “personalised medicine” [4]

Pharmacogenomics

 The study of how a person’s genes affect the way he or she responds to drugs. Pharmacogenetics is being used to learn ahead of time what the best drug or the best dose of a drug will be for a person [106]

Genomic medicine

 The use of genetic information to improve health outcomes

Stratified medicine

 The identification of subgroups of patients with a particular disease who respond to a particular drug or, alternatively, are at risk of side effects in response to a certain treatment [3]

Theranostics

 The term “theranostics” was coined to define ongoing efforts in clinics to develop more specific, individualised therapies for various diseases and to combine diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities into a single agent [107]

Radiogenomics

 Radiogenomics is a relatively recently coined term that describes the relationship between imaging features of a lesion and the underlying genetic/molecular features. It can be helpful for improved personalised diagnosis, prognosis, and assessment of treatment response [72]

Companion diagnostics

 A companion diagnostic device can be an in-vitro diagnostic device (IVD) or an imaging tool that provides information that is essential for the safe and effective use of a corresponding therapeutic product. The use of an IVD companion diagnostic device with a particular therapeutic product is stipulated in the instructions for use in the labelling of both the diagnostic device and the corresponding therapeutic product as well as in the labelling of any generic equivalents and biosimilar equivalents of the therapeutic product [108]

Genomic profile

 Information about all the genes in an organism, including variations, gene expression, and the way those genes interact with each other and with the environment. A genomic profile may be used to discover why some people get certain diseases while other people do not or why people respond differently to the same drug [106]