Innovative collaboration applies state-of-the-art computation to medical care Individual choices in medicine carry a certain amount of uncertainty. An innovative partnership at The University of Texas at Austin takes aim at medicine down to the individual level by applying state-of-the-art computation to medical care. "Medicine in its essence is decision-making under uncertainty, decisions about tests and treatments," said Radek Bukowski, MD, PhD, professor and associate chair of Investigation and Discovery in the Department of Women's Health at Dell Medical School at UT Austin. The human body and the healthcare system are complex systems made of a vast number of intensely interacting elements," he said. "In such complex systems, there are many different pathways along which an outcome can occur. Our bodies are robust, but this also makes us very individualized, and the practice of medicine challenging. Everyone is made of different combinations of risk factors and protective characteristics. This is why precision medicine is paramount going forward.