El papel del laboratorio clínico en la medicina personalizada: situación actual y retos futuros

Personalised medicine, precision medicine, or individualised medicine has been defined as the way of preventing and treating diseases based on the genetic, environmental, and lifestyle variability for each individual. It classifies subjects into sub-populations that have different susceptibilities to develop a specific disease or to respond to a particular treatment. Its aim is to follow-up and treat each patient in the more suited to the patient. The establishment of the processes related to personalised medicine requires that specialists in Laboratory Medicine cope with cutting-edge, and little-known, technology with an interpretation that is highly complex from a clinical point of view. This review summarises the current situation of personalised medicine, the role of laboratory medicine in its implementation, and the challenges that need to be faced.