Sorting out and navigating uncertainty in precision medicine

Uncertainty has been highlighted as a paradoxical consequence of precision medicine (PM). In the life sciences and medicine, uncertainty is often conceptualized as something that can be clearly delimited and overcome by more information and better understanding derived from more research, more data, better tools etc. Building on the observation of uncertainty in PM and exploring it further by differentiating between socio-technical, epistemological and ontological uncertainty, we claim that at least some forms will likely turn out to be non-transient: Uncertainty in PM does not only result from missing or incomplete information, but also from insights into biological complexity and the destabilization of evidence frameworks. We conclude by discussing some implications for a successful implementation of PM in clinical practice by adequately navigating uncertainty.