Precision Biomarker — Foundation Learning Guide¶
For a reader with no background in this area. If you have watched the Foundations film series, this follows directly from it.
The one idea to hold¶
Prognostic tells you the likely course. Predictive tells you whether a specific treatment will work. Only one of those chooses a therapy.
What this subject does with that idea¶
Identifies measurable markers that predict how a disease will behave or how a patient will respond.
Predictive and prognostic are different questions. Conflating them changes the wrong decision.
Decision support for a qualified clinician — never autonomous diagnosis or prescribing. Every output on this page is intended to inform a clinician's judgement, not replace it.
What it cannot do¶
Many biomarker inputs are research- or trial-use, not validated for routine clinical practice.
Stating the limit is not a disclaimer bolted on the end — it is how you tell a tool that helps from a tool that misleads.
Vocabulary you will meet¶
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Capability | One named thing the platform can do, registered in capabilities.json |
live / planned |
Whether a capability actually answers today, or is intended |
| Decision support | Output that informs a clinician; it never decides |
| LIVE / REPRESENTATIVE / BURST | Whether a demo ran now, was pre-computed, or ran on remote GPUs |
Try it¶
The demo for this subject is A2:
.venv/bin/python scripts/run_demo.py A2
If it reports BLOCKED, the message names exactly what is missing. That is intentional — a demo
that cannot run says so rather than showing you something canned.