President Barack Obama laid out some aggressive healthcare goals in his final State of the Union address on Tuesday night, including a broader focus on precision medicine and the appointment of Vice President Joe Biden to lead what he called a “moonshot” effort to cure cancer.

"I don’t want to talk just about the next year," said Obama. "I want to focus on the next five years, 10 years, and beyond. I want to focus on our future."

Obama pledged to pursue initiatives focused on healthcare and technology goals such as "helping students learn to write computer code (and) personalizing medical treatments for patients." That latter goal promises to build on the Precision Medicine Initiative he launched with this 2015 State of the Union address.

[Also: What Obama's precision medicine plan needs to succeed.]

But he also set his sights on a goal that healthcare has sought for decades.

"Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer," said Obama. "Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources they’ve had in over a decade. Tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done."

Biden, he said, would lead it.

Immediately after the speech, Biden put out a statement outlining his near-term plans for this audacious goal.

"It’s personal for me," said Biden, who lost his son Beau to brain cancer in May 2015. "But it’s also personal for nearly every American, and millions of people around the world. We all know someone who has had cancer, or is fighting to beat it. They’re our family, friends, and co-workers. If this disease has touched your life, I want to hear your story."

In recent months, Biden said he's "met with nearly 200 of the world’s top cancer physicians, researchers, and philanthropists."

The aim, he said, is to get them and others on board to "seize this moment" and "unleash new discoveries and breakthroughs" to fight cancer and other diseases.

"Several cutting-edge areas of research and care — including cancer immunotherapy, genomics, and combination therapies — could be revolutionary," said Biden. "Innovations in data and technology offer the promise to speed research advances and improve care delivery."

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But too often data and research results are trapped in silos, he said. "Right now, only 5 percent of cancer patients in the U.S. end up in a clinical trial. Most aren’t given access to their own data. At the same time, community oncologists — who treat more than 75 percent of cancer patients — have limited access to cutting-edge research and advances."

By increasing public and private funding to fight cancer and breaking down silos to bring researchers together, the aim is to "double the rate of progress" – a decade's worth of oncology advances in the next five years.

"Data and technology innovators can play a role in revolutionizing how medical and research data is shared and used to reach new breakthroughs," said Biden.

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN