The National Institutes of Health (NIH) March 30 announced the formation of a Working Group of the Advisory Committee to the Director (ACD) on the Precision Medicine Initiative.
The initiative was first announced in January 2015, with a goal of building a knowledge base to greatly expand the practice of precision medicine by connecting a national network of scientists and creating a foundation for research based on patient engagement and open data sharing. A primary objective of the initiative is to establish a million-person national cohort to better understand the mechanisms underlying health and disease in a diverse population.
The Working Group of the ACD on the Precision Medicine Initiative is charged with helping to define the goals, issues, and metrics of success for the initiative, and will do so through a series of public meetings and by soliciting input from the community and interested stakeholders.
The Working Group will be co-chaired by Richard Lifton, M.D., Ph.D., Sterling Professor of Genetics and Chair of the Department of Genetics at Yale University School of Medicine; Bray Patrick-Lake, MFS, Director of Patient Engagement, Duke University Translational Medicine Institute; and Kathy Hudson, Ph.D., NIH Deputy Director of Science, Outreach, and Policy.
Other members include leaders from academic medicine, philanthropic foundations, and industry, and several ex-officio members from federal agencies.
The Working Group will deliver a preliminary report at the September 2015 NIH ACD meeting to inform efforts to further develop the initiative.