Details of President Barack Obama's Precision Health Initiative have been released by the White House, including a request for 1 million American volunteers willing to contribute their genetic data for research.
The genetic data provided by the volunteers will be used to research how to improve health outcomes, develop new treatments and accelerate precision medicine as a data-based approach to care.
"The potential for precision medicine to improve care and speed the development of new treatments has only just begun to be tapped," according to the statement. "Translating initial successes to a larger scale will require a coordinated and sustained national effort."
The President's 2016 budget — which will be announced Monday, Feb. 3 — will include $215 million for the National Institutes of Health, Food and Drug Administration and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology to invest in the Precision Medicine Initiative.
Specific investments outline in the initiative include:
- $130 million to the NIH to develop a voluntary national research cohort of 1 million or more American volunteers.
- $70 million to the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH, to increase and begin applying efforts to identify genomic drivers in cancer to effective treatment approaches.
- $10 million to the FDA to grow expertise, advance curated precision medicine databases and support a regulatory structure to protect public health.
- $5 million to the ONC to further interoperability standards and requirements associated with privacy and secure data exchange across systems.
More articles on precision medicine:
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