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The Obama administration has set a goal of recruiting 1 million volunteers to hand over their genetic and health data, as part of the $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative.
Dr. Robert Califf, the head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, thinks that’s far too modest an ambition. “Let’s think in terms of 10, 20, or 100 million,” he said in an interview with STAT here at a global biotech convention.
And that’s not his only goal: Califf is also calling on life sciences companies to share information about the genetic data they collect and analyze in the quest to develop new treatments.
To accomplish that, Califf is touting a new tool: precisionFDA. It’s an online, cloud-based portal that was launched this past December, offering scientists from academia, industry, and the government a common space to work together.
The precisionFDA tool is aimed at encouraging diagnostics companies, in particular, to set aside their competitiveness and work together. Currently “hundreds” are working on the precisionFDA platform, Califf said.
Read full, original post: FDA chief aims to recruit 100 million Americans for precision medicine research
