President Barack Obama's State of the Union address touched on a "precision medicine" initiative and the White House is now laying out information on what that will entail.
In a blog post, the Associate Director for Science at the White House Office of Science and Technology, Jo Handelsman explained how advancements in genomics, medical imaging, and health information technology are allowing researchers to better understand and develop new treatments for diabetes, cancer, and other debilitating diseases.
"The potential for precision medicine to improve care and produce new treatments has only begun to be tapped. Translating initial successes to a larger scale will require a coordinated and sustained national effort," Handelsman writes. He said more details, specific efforts, will be announced soon.
Precision medicine has been at the center of many efforts by large health systems across the country. The University of Colorado Health (UC Health) has invested in the implementation of precision medicine through big data technologies. In New York, the Weill Cornell Medical College and New York-Presbyterian Hospital launched a medicine research hub have run a targeted, individualized treatment based on each patient's genetic profile. One of the winner's of last year's Innovator winners, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was lauded for its enterprise-wide implementation of genotyping and clinical decision support.
