The Department of Veterans Affairs is encouraging veterans to participate in the Million Veterans Program, a research warehouse bringing together electronic health records with data from genomics and molecular biology.

The Million Veterans Program, launched in September, follows on the heels of similar genomic and informatics research projects sprouting up. In a recent article in Health Affairs, the VA’s chief research officer, Joel Kupersmith, MD, and Timothy O’Leary, of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, call it a “mega-database” with the potential to drive new research and therapies to help personalize care for veterans with chronic conditions.

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With access to both a veteran’s genomic data and medical history, VA researchers are hoping to identify and verify genetic associations with diseases and conditions and find practical clinical applications of gene-guided therapies, especially for chronic conditions common among military veterans and post-traumatic stress disorder.

As an all-around administrative and data IT system, the VA has built the Genomic Information System for Integrated Science, or GenISIS, for enrollment, mail and call centers, consents and genomic data sets.

The aim is to gradually advance the GenISIS software’s capacity and clinical data management, eventually using it as a biomedical informatics repository and analysis tool for genomics-based personalized medicine.

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Highlighting the database’s potential, Kupersmith and O’Leary say the 8.5 million veterans who receive care through the VA comprise a relatively diverse patient population (although 90 percent male) from across the country and the VA healthcare system.

The Million Veterans Program currently has 103,102 enrollees, and is set up at 40 of the VA’s research-affiliated medical centers. In a first round of consent letters, 59 percent of veterans opted into the project, 41 percent opted out; 14 percent of the enrollees were “drop-ins” who learned of the program and came in on their own.

Beyond informing the VA’s care and developing genomic-based knowledge and therapies, O’Leary and Kupersmith write that the project will also inform understanding risks, symptoms and conditions associated with military activities, such as exposures to toxic compounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, from fires, travel and military garbage incineration sites.