A patient and friend of mine authored a book a few years back and asked me to write the forward. She was a survivor of cancer for 10 years, and I had been her doctor through the entire illness. As anyone who has battled cancer knows, you never stop looking over your shoulder. She would always have to be checked for a recurrence, and this year was no different. However, what was different from the previous 10 years was that this biopsy came back positive. I was devastated. How do I tell my patient this news, someone whom I now considered a friend?

At this crossroads, I was given some of the best advice of my career by a member of my own family: Sharing bad news with someone you care about is as important as sharing good news with them.

As physicians, we have a personal commitment to address and deal with each patient's issues to the best of our God-given abilities. This is the art of personalized health care - getting to know your patient as a person: her pains, her background, her emotional makeup, her family history, her scientific framework.

Personalized health care can be compared to the double threads of a person's DNA. One strand is the scientific discovery that can dramatically change the practice of medicine. The second strand is the knowledge of an individual as a human being that can have a lasting impact on how we influence a person's life. The intricate interweaving of the two strands truly represents personalized health care. While only some of us are privileged to be part of a scientific discovery, all of us have daily opportunities to understand people and improve their lives, thus fulfilling the promise of personalized health care.