Personalised health

We are unashamed champions of personalised health. And we are critical friends. Here’s what we are doing to make personalised health work for population health.

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What is personalised health?

Personalised healthcare, precision medicine, stratified medicine, person-centred? All these – and probably others – are often used synonymously, but each has its own nuances. For more than a decade, PHG Foundation has been exploring these concepts, separately and together.

Back in 2014 in discussions with stakeholders, we set out our definition of personalised healthcare.

But even this broad term doesn’t fully capture the immense potential for personalised approaches to transform population health. We are therefore committing to the term personalised health, to embrace all the above along with prevention and the maintenance of good health, using the best science has to offer.

In July 2025, the UK government published its ten year plan for the NHS in England. We welcome its emphasis on genomics, prevention and technology and the contribution each of these can make to a personalised health system. But ambition on the scale laid out in the plan will face a very winding and uncertain road to implementation.

We are unashamed champions of personalised health. And we are critical friends. Personalised healthcare is often associated with attempts to shift health responsibility towards individuals, increasing inequities and a reduction in the role of health and related systems. These are real risks, but they are not inherent.

Our mission is to make science work for the health of all and to support efforts to make personalised health work for population health.

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