In January 2015, President Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), a bold new research effort to revolutionize how we improve health and treat disease. Precision medicine is about empowering both patients and healthcare providers with the information and tools they need to tailor treatment and prevention strategies to patients’ unique characteristics.
When he launched the PMI, President Obama called for all hands on deck to continue the kinds of progress that are already beginning to transform the ways we treat diseases such as cancer. Patients with breast, lung, and colorectal cancers, as well as melanomas and leukemias, routinely undergo molecular testing as part of their care, enabling physicians to select treatments that improve chances of survival and reduce exposure to adverse effects. This is precision medicine in action. But there is so much more promise and potential to be unlocked – and we need to extend the successes we’ve seen to other diseases that affect Americans and people around the world.
The Administration is releasing a set of draft guiding principles to protect privacy and build public trust as the PMI develops. These principles will guide the development of a research cohort of one million or more participants who voluntarily contribute their health data to help us answer the many as yet unsolved mysteries of health and disease. These principles are being made available today as a working draft, with the intent of soliciting the broadest possible input and feedback from stakeholders, experts, and the public.
- Read the proposed PMI Guiding Principles here
The GLP aggregated and excerpted this blog/article to reflect the diversity of news, opinion and analysis. Read full, original post: Six Months of Progress on the Precision Medicine Initiative
