UC Hospitals To Participate In Precision Medicine Initiative

Four medical centers affiliated with the University of California healthcare system and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles are among the first providers in the nation named as part of a federal precision medicine initiative.

 

Along with Cedars-Sinai, the medical centers affiliated with UC San Francisco, UC San Diego and UC Irvine have been named as part of the California Precision Medicine Consortium. Other participants include the University of Southern California and the San Diego Blood Bank. 

 

Those entities have been named along with Geisinger Health in Pennsylvania, the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, Essentia Health in Minnesota and other entities.

 

Altogether, the new participants in the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program will be awarded $5.5 million from the National Institutes of Health to begin employee recruitment and building infrastructure. The California Consortium will initially receive $1.3 million.

 

“We want this program to be open to everyone across the United States,” said Eric Dishman, director of the PMI Cohort Program. “These additional healthcare provider organizations will help us in our efforts to reach communities that have been underrepresented in research. By contributing their information, these communities will help people and their health care providers identify the right prevention strategies or treatments. With the PMI Cohort Program, we’re making a concerted effort to include people from all communities and walks of life, to make sure that the knowledge we gain benefits everyone.”

 

Under the PMI Cohort program, the various participants in California will ask patient volunteers to provide some data about themselves, including undergoing physical exams, making tissue donations and providing their electronic health records for the purposes of research.

 

The Precision Medicine Initiative was launched last year by President Obama, with the intent of being able to aggregate enough granular patient data in order to better customize treatments for cancer and other diseases. The initiative involves the NIH, the Food and Drug Administration, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and other federal agencies.

 

There have been some tentative steps toward precision medicine and population health by some large healthcare entities that have access to millions of patient records. Quest Diagnostics, the nation's second-largest laboratory company, released research last year based on de-identified lab tests that concluded states that expanded Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act saw their rates of diabetes surge. That was connected primarily to more testing among newly insured patients, but could be used as a template for preventing and treating diabetes in the future.

 

“This is an important step toward making precision medicine a reality, and we are pleased to participate in this national effort through the California Precision Medicine Consortium,” said Keith Yamamoto, director of UCSF's precision medicine. “Its success will depend on community engagement, including both patients and healthy people who become convinced that their contributions will benefit the health and well-being of themselves, their children and their grandchildren. California’s rich diversity will strengthen the national effort.”