Today we are on the brink of a much-needed transformative moment for health care. The U.S. health care system is designed to be reactive instead of preventive. The result can be diagnoses that are too late and outcomes that are far worse than our level of spending should deliver. In recent years, U.S. life expectancy has been declining.

Fundamental to realizing better health, and a more effective health-care system, is advancing the disruptive thinking that has spawned innovation in Silicon Valley and throughout the world. That's exactly what Stanford Medicine has done by proposing a new vision for health and health care. In Discovering Precision Health, Lloyd Minor and Matthew Rees describe a holistic approach designed to set health care on the right track: keep people healthy by preventing disease before it starts and personalize the treatment of individuals precisely, based on their specific profile.