What are some potential benefits of precision medicine and the Precision Medicine Initiative?

Precision medicine holds promise for improving many aspects of health and healthcare. Some of these benefits will be apparent soon, as the Precision Medicine Initiative’s research cohort is set up and new tools and approaches for managing data are developed. Other benefits will result from long-term research in precision medicine and may not be realized for years.

Potential benefits of the Precision Medicine Initiative:

New approaches for protecting research participants, particularly patient privacy and the confidentiality of their data.
Design of new tools for building, analyzing, and sharing large sets of medical data.
Improvement of FDA oversight of tests, drugs, and other technologies to support innovation while ensuring that these products are safe and effective.
New partnerships of scientists in a wide range of specialties, as well as people from the patient advocacy community, universities, pharmaceutical companies, and others.
Opportunity for a million people to contribute to the advancement of scientific research.

Potential long-term benefits of research in precision medicine:

Wider ability of doctors to use patients’ genetic and other molecular information as part of routine medical care.
Improved ability to predict which treatments will work best for specific patients.
Better understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which various diseases occur.
Improved approaches to preventing, diagnosing, and treating a wide range of diseases.
Better integration of electronic health records (EHRs) in patient care, which will allow doctors and researchers to access medical data more easily.

Read more about the promise of precision medicine and the Precision Medicine Initiative:

The NIH website about precision medicine discusses the short-term goals

and long-term goals

of the Precision Medicine Initiative.

Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH, and Dr. Harold Varmus, former director of the NCI, wrote about their vision for the Precision Medicine Initiative

in the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Collins also gave a talk about his vision

for the project, which is available on the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative channel

on YouTube.

The White House website offers examples of how precision medicine is helping Americans