BY GRACE MOEN

It’s been a solid 14 years since the Human Genome Project was dubbed complete, and in more recent years there has been a major uptick in funding to the field of Precision Health and Medicine. The year 2015 marked an impressive effort by the Obama Administration with the launch of a $215 million dollar Precision Medicine Initiative, and private sources followed suite, with Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg’s whopping $3 billion dollar investment to the field among others. While many serious illnesses vie for research dollars, curing cancer would no doubt be the shining achievement of this work, particularly for children.

Hope and big promises are the public face of Precision Health – a powerful force responsible for driving in dollars and securing public buy-in. With both federal and private funding flowing in, it is no longer an emerging field – Precision Health has arrived. Recent federal budget cuts are only serving to increase the fervor in which scientists, technologists, and advocates innovate. Just this week the National Institute of Health announced that they will distribute 10,000 Fitbits to their All of Us research participants. This represents a concerted effort to unlock the grip on personal data and bridge existing silos.

Environmental data, from Fitbit for example, related to factors such as sleep, food, and exercise is an essential way to support Precision Health advancements, but it’s arguably useless without a platform of robust machine learning, genetic sequencing, and care delivery.

The digital health community is a proactive bunch. So what’s next? How can we come together to accelerate innovation? Health 2.0 is launching a new conference series – Technology for Precision Health – that promises more on the subject. Here are just some areas up for discussion on December 12 and beyond…

Infrastructure for decision making: Technology-enabled insights into how a person lives and behaves in their daily life, creates an environment in which physicians are empowered to make smarter decisions.
New analytics, diagnostics, and screening tools: Tools that support a myriad of innovations from the reduction of invasive diagnoses to continuous monitoring and direct to consumer testing services.
Technologies: An exploration of technological impacts on drug development, regulatory and reimbursement systems, and the patient experience.
Investing: Policy, for better or for worse, influences the landscape of innovation so where can investors put their dollars for the greatest impact?

All in all, Precision Health is about the right treatment getting administered to the right patient at exactly the right time. And with the momentum surging in the field right now, we are on track for some big breakthroughs.

###

One Size Fits All Is Out, Precision Health Is In