NIH Feedback: Precision Medicine Initiative

NIH Feedback: Precision Medicine Initiative

NIH Precision Medicine Initiative

President Obama launched the Precision Medicine Initiative on January 30, 2015. Precision medicine is an emerging approach in which disease treatment and prevention is developed to account for differences in people’s genes, environments, and lifestyles. NIH is gathering input from the general public, scientists, industry, and other stakeholders through various mechanisms as it plans the development of the Precision Medicine Initiative and the formation of the national research cohort. NIH is using this feedback site to share some of the considerations and welcome you to share your thoughts at http://feedback.nih.gov/. New topics for feedback will post approximately every three to four weeks through the end of August 2015.

Research Questions for the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort

Posted on June 5, 2015

Welcome to the NIH Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Feedback blog! The PMI will build a comprehensive scientific knowledge base to put precision medicine into practice on a much larger scale. To achieve this goal, the initiative will build a national research cohort study of 1 million or more Americans to propel our understanding of health and disease. Every few weeks we will feature a new topic and welcome the opportunity to know your thoughts.

This first post focuses on the critical research questions that can be uniquely addressed by the cohort to advance precision medicine. Currently, NIH is considering a number of areas where the research using such a cohort may be particularly helpful, including:

1. Determining how an individual will respond to a particular drug based on their genes
2. Discovering new molecular causes for a variety of rare diseases
3. Identifying new ways to predict disease development using an individual’s genes or other physical characteristics
4. Identifying new ways to predict disease using information about an individual’s environment or behaviors
5. Testing new ways to prevent or treat disease using mobile health technologies, such as smartphones or activity trackers

We’d like your thoughts on the most important scientific questions that the cohort can answer.

The Feedback site will accept comments on these topics through June 26.  Comments received via the Feedback site may be considered by the NIH as it plans the development of the President’s Precision Medicine Initiative and the vision for building the national participant group, but NIH will not respond to comments.