I believe in evidence-based practice — it’s how we know a tool is likely to work. But “evidence” comes from average effects across a study population, and that’s a blunt instrument for helping any one person. Even a highly significant clinical trial might only help a fraction of the people who try it (SSRIs, a first-line depression treatment, need roughly seven people treated for one to see significant benefit) — and when it doesn’t work for you, there’s often no good explanation on offer.
The fix is more information, not less: genetic markers, other symptoms, family history, lifestyle, preferences — no single data point predicts your response, but more of them sharpen the guess considerably. This is the promise of precision medicine — not just pharmacogenetics, but getting precise about environment, lifestyle, and context using the data our wearables and phones already collect. We have the technology. Let’s turn it into evidence and put it into practice.