Information hierarchies optimize patient-centered solutions

Enabling science and information technologies has catalyzed a surge of biological, clinical, demographic, health services, and comparative-effectiveness data. While accelerating the deconvolution of complex pathophysiological, medical, social, and environmental networks and systems, these platforms have produced informational quanta devoid of contextualization. Therapeutic innovation is thus now challenged with moving beyond knowledge generation and curation to integrated solution-seeking paradigms that organize functionally related information, producing system-level insights into health and disease for optimized patient-centered outcomes. This annual issue on therapeutics innovations highlights emerging considerations for the generation and hierarchical organization of scientific and clinical information and its translation to advancing next-generation disease management. Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics (2013); 93 1, 3–7. doi:10.1038/clpt.2012.208