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Precision medicine in antimicrobial therapy is uniquely challenging given that the interplay between drug, pathogen and patient forms a ‘three-body problem’, making prediction of clinical outcomes difficult. The three-body problem in physics and mathematics describes the enormous complexity of predicting the motion of three interacting celestial bodies (originally the Earth, Moon and Sun) due to the non-linear and interdependent forces acting between them.1 While two-body systems admit relatively straightforward analytical solutions and calculations, the introduction of a third body produces instability, sensitivity to initial conditions and chaotic behaviour that defies closed-form prediction.1 At best, an estimation of the motion of these masses is possible, and there remains invariably a degree of mathematical uncertainty.1