Direct-to-consumer genetic testing requires that physicians share decision making with patients, not order unnecessary tests or interventions, and refer to genetic specialists when necessary.

Though the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s collection of disaggregated genetic data for occupational surveillance and research raises numerous privacy concerns, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 allows genetic information to be used to develop personal pharmaceuticals.

This portrait of a child against a backdrop of health data suggests how a patient’s individuality can be obscured when precision medicine is used in decision making and developing target therapies.

Precision medicine creates patient subgroups to develop targeted interventions. This raises ethical issues about privacy, informed consent, and social justice. It also raises questions about cost, what to do with faulty data, and the role of genetic stratification in treating and monitoring patients.

Rare genetic disease research has something to teach precision medicine about addressing some patients’ limited access to treatment. Health disparities exacerbated by high costs and limited availability of drugs can, perhaps, be mitigated when patient activism accelerates drug development.

Social and behavioral data contained in electronic health records are essential for studying health disparities. Can researchers avoid bias when collecting, analyzing, and using such data?

Perhaps machine learning systems trained on patients’ electronic health records and social media footprints could be used as decision aids when patients lack capacity or face overwhelming decisions.

Mandatory genetic testing of health care professionals could help structure health care organizations’ responses to a pandemic. Patients and more susceptible employees can benefit, and these benefits must be weighed against concerns about fairness, autonomy, genetic privacy, and potential loss of employment opportunities.

Clinical decision support systems leverage data generated in the course of standard clinical care to improve clinical practice. They need to ensure privacy and quality of patients’ data, but must also allow queries of electronic health records.

This photograph of a kaleidoscope of potentially life-saving and potentially life-threatening pills suggests ethical conflict inherent in clinicians’ strivings to meet patients’ pain relief needs without contributing crises of drug diversion.