Introduction
cancer, ill
CANCER, REMISSION
Precision medicine may revolutionise healthcare by tailoring interventions to patients’ specific genetic, biological, and behavioural markers. Targeted therapies can lead to better health outcomes, such as increased life expectancy and remission rates, notably in cancer (Research in placebo science has shown that the contextual factors surrounding the intervention, such as verbal suggestions, patient expectations, social cues, and observational learning increase its effectiveness and reduce the associated side effects (The public generally believes that personalised interventions are fully unique, so much so that the field rebranded from ‘personalised’ to ‘precision’ medicine in an effort to dispel this exaggerated view (Beyond the appeal to individuality, the personalisation process may implicitly suggest stronger perceived treatment effectiveness by harnessing factors well-known to increase the placebo effect (Despite the similarities between the ideal contextual factors for strong placebo effects and the typical contextual factors involved in precision medicine, the influence of the personalisation process on perceived treatment effectiveness is largely unknown. Thus, we tested whether believing that a treatment is tailored to one’s physiology and genetics may improve its perceived efficacy. We predicted that participants using the machine presented as personalised would report greater placebo effects than those in a control group.To isolate the role of the placebo effects of personalisation while avoiding the ethical issues involved in deceiving severely ill patients—the typical participants in precision clinical trials—we tested healthy adults. We developed an elaborate procedure to plausibly simulate treatment personalisation and then tested it in a feasibility study (