- On Sunday, the National Institutes of Health will open enrollment in All of Us, an ambitious effort to recruit 1 million people to advance precision medicine.
- The research program — which will collect information on participants’ health, lifestyle behaviors and living and work situations — will roll out with community events in seven cities across the country, as well as an online event.
- The aim is to lessen the need for costly and lengthy clinical trials by amassing a database of health and lifestyle information researchers can probe to understand how people may respond to different treatments.
Precision medicine is changing the way people think about medicine and healthcare. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, doctors and scientists are targeting specific genomic footprints and mutations to design drugs and diagnostics — with the hope of a better, more personalized outcome for the patient.
In December, Google launched Deep Variant, an open source tool that uses artificial intelligence to generate a profile of a person’s genetic blueprint using sequencing data. The idea is that pinpointing specific genes or variations will help providers better manage disease states.
President Barack Obama announced the national Precision Medicine Initiative in his 2015 State of the Union address. The initiative included plans to collect information about and sequence 1 million Americans’ genomes through public-private collaborations.
Congress increased protections for federally funded research in the 21st Century Cures Act, authorizing NIH to spend $4.8 billion to fund the precision medicine, Cancer Moonshot and the BRAIN Initiative efforts. NIH says it has funded more than 100 organizations to carry out the precision medicine program.
All of Us participants will complete online surveys and share personal data from EHRs. Some will also be asked to provide blood and urine samples and basic physical stats at local partner sites. In the future, data may also be collected from wearable devices, the agency said. The program also plans to add children at some point.
“Building a diverse participant community will be vital to the success of All of Us, so we can address the many pressing health conditions that disproportionately affect underrepresented communities,” Dara Richardson-Heron, the program’s chief engagement officer, said in a statement. “The All of Us Research Program has the potential to help researchers better understand and begin chipping away at health disparities so that everyone can benefit from better health, better health care and exciting new breakthroughs.”