But the prediction side isn't the only part of personalized medicine that's fascinating. It has the potential to drastically change the way medical care is delivered, but there are a number of hurdles to clear first. Some of those are technological, and some of those are at the heart of my thesis project. But other hurdles are policy issues, economic issues, ethical issues, and privacy issues. I have no way of addressing them (other than VERY briefly) in my thesis, both because they're too far afield, and because I have little expertise in those areas.

I like to think broadly about things, however, and I think that this topic is too important to be considered in isolation. This is something that needs to be discussed publicly, both to allay people's fears and also to take advantage of their wisdom. So that's what I'll be trying to do. I'm going to begin by defining some terms and then we'll see where that takes me.

As I said, this is an experiment, so this will be a little different than a typical blog. The posts will tend to be longer and somewhat less frequent. For now the plan is to publish on Mondays and Thursday, but that may change in the future. For me this blog is going to serve two purposes: 1) to keeping up writing while I'm actually doing the work of the thesis (I've just spent a month writing the first two chapters of my thesis, and I know how much constant practice improves writing, so I want to give myself that practice), and 2) to serve as a testing grounds for ideas to put into a publication on the policy of personalized medicine. I'd love to hear input and comments, so please send me an email (my address is in the sidebar).