Obama Thinks "Precision Medicine" Will Make Us Healthier. Experts are Skeptical.

The White House is committing $215 million to support efforts to develop personalized medicine, a priority the President touched on in his State of the Union earlier this month.

At the time, the details weren't clear. But today the White House released more information on the "precision medicine initiative," which has bipartisan support: it would get started with a $215 million cash injection from the 2016 federal budget to support everything from the building databases at the National Institutes of Health to study the genetic bases of disease, to applying that knowledge to targeted cancer therapeutics and public health.

"Most medical treatments have been designed for the 'average patient,'" the White House statement read. "As a result of this 'one-size-fits-all-approach,' treatments can be very successful for some patients but not for others."

The only problem is that this is much, much harder than it sounds.

Precision medicine — also known as personalized or individualized medicine — has been one of the big, unmet promises in health care for a long time. Hank Greely, a law professor at Stanford...