from medical gaze to statistical person historical reflections on evidencebased and personalised medicine background the nineteenth century saw the rise of what historians of medicine have termed the medical gaze physicians used instrumentation and trained senses to locate the site of disease within the patients body this change in practice went alongside changes in the physicians power and how diseases were understood in the twentyfirst century the rise of highthroughput biomedical experiments especially in genomics is leading to equally dramatic shifts in medicine increasingly clinical decisions may be made on the basis of data and statistical associations rather than the particularities of the case at handobjective the aim of this commentary iso reevaluate the status of precision and evidencebased medicine in light of the social political and economic shifts they entaildiscussion increasingly the statistical view of diseases and people threatens to take judgment and expertise out of medical decision making it threatens the centrality of the physician in the relationship between patient and disease