During the 2015 State of the Union address, President Obama unveiled plans for a $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative. The details of this plan were laid out by past and present directors of the National Institutes of Health, Harold Varmus and Francis Collins, in a commentary in the New England Journal of Medicine.1 While the announcement stood as a public statement of support for funding, it was likely the first introduction the American public had to a concept that has been close to my heart for more than a decade. In 2005, I founded the Personal Genome Project, the world’s first open data set of genomic and patient data. The Precision Medicine Initiative offers many opportunities to promote the progress of chemistry, and chemistry in its turn can do much to satisfy the aims of the Initiative. The term precision medicine generally refers to the personalization of healthcare (decisions, practices, and products) for a given patient based on his or her unique history and genetic makeup. Because cancer is widely recognized as a disease born out of mutations, many of them being patient-specific, the precision medicine stereotype emphasizes pharmacogenomics, cancer, and especially their intersection.1 Despite this close association, other fertile opportunities are beginning to blossom. The number of allele-specific drugs (e.g., Ivacaftor aimed at the 5% of cystic fibrosis patients with a specific G551D mutation) and allele-specific treatment decisions (e.g., warfarin dosing based on CYP2C9* type) are increasing rapidly across many diseases. The fact that this growth is occurring despite initial concerns over the commercial viability of such tiny markets demonstrates the power of precision medicine and suggests the importance of this initiative. Nevertheless, even classic cases (like warfarin) can lose significance upon careful examination2—indicating an urgent need for more precise and novel approaches. Regardless of the fate of the Precision Medicine Initiative, the broad ideas raised by the President’s proposal highlight some exciting new areas for chemists and chemistry.