Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supports the precision medicine program, which focuses on customized health care for individuals.
The Presidential 2016 Budget included precision medicine, and the program is getting $215 million as funding. Dr. Collins suggests that the one of the early task of the program will be to bring together data from existing studies that has been conducted by various institutions.
Some providers, who have already conducted studies on precision medicine, have expressed their interest in being a part of the program. The latest program is estimated to gather together genetic data and health information of more than one million Americans that will be used for the development of targeted medicines.
The Mayo Clinic, the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, Kaiser Permanente, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and Geisinger Health System have shown their interest in participating in the program.
Dr. Collins suggests that there may be many agencies willing to participate in the precision medicine program, but NIH has to find a way to bring together the medical records that lie in the computer systems of various agencies. Once all data is collected, NIH also has to find a way to make the data work coherently.
"That's a high priority early on. That doesn't necessarily mean all of the data is in one place being operated by the same software," says Dr. Collins.
Dr. Collins suggests that the key objective of the precision medicine program is to understand the main drivers of various diseases that infect humans and then develop appropriate medicines that are targeted to a person's genetic makeup.
A lot of data about an individual may be collected for the program, but Dr. Collins suggests that patients who give their data should be given the charge of how their medical and personal data can be used.
Dr. Collins has selected Kathy Hudson, Deputy Director of NIH and Dr. Richard Lifton, a geneticist, to head a panel that will work toward handling patient data. Dr. Collins suggests that the new panel will evaluate various proposals in the coming months and will have an estimation to start the program by September or October of this year.
The $215 million budget includes $130 million for NIH for developing a national level program that will track data of around 1 million donors for their DNA sequencing.
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