Precision Medicine Initiative expands with Geisinger, Partners HealthCare, Henry Ford, many more
The National Institutes of Health will add four groups of healthcare provider organizations to a national network designed to put the Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program to work.
New participants will receive initial funds totaling $5.5 million to both begin recruitment of a million people for the program and to build the infrastructure.
The PMI Cohort program is a longitudinal research effort to recruit a million or more people for research on how best to prevent and treat disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics. Participants are charged with gathering participants’ health information and biospecimens and providing input on developing plans for the program.
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“We want this program to be open to everyone across the United States,” Eric Dishman, director of the PMI Cohort Program, said in a statement. “These additional healthcare provider organizations will help us in our efforts to reach communities that have been underrepresented in research.”
The four new awardees are Geisinger Health System; the California Precision Medicine Consortium, which encomasses several Univeristy of California campuses; the New England Precision Medicine Consortium, including Massachusetts General Hospital and Partners Healthcare, among others; and the Trans-American Consortium for the Health Care Systems Research Network, consisting of Henry Ford Health System and Baylor Scott and White Research Institute as well as several other partnering organizations.
The four new healthcare groups join other participants NIH announced in July. As efforts advance, the centers may receive first-year funds up to $16 million from NIH.
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