The term “precision medicine” might not yet be part of the average person’s vocabulary, but UCSF and its collaborators are hoping a public awareness campaign will move the needle in that direction.
Dr. Susan Desmond-Hellmann, chancellor of the university, is spearheading a public campaign called Me For You that’s urging the public to do its part in advancing precision medicine by pledging to share their health data.
With the Rise of AI, What IP Disputes in Healthcare Are Likely to Emerge?
Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
With the same underlying concept as personalized medicine, precision medicine calls for an approach to disease diagnosis and treatment that integrates genomic and environmental data with a person’s individual health data. That is, it’s focused on treating an individual, not a disease.
“It’s only by demanding that health improve that we think the precision medicine vision will actually take place,” Hellmann says in a video promoting the multidisciplinary OME Summit held in May. That event marked the launch of the campaign by bringing together leaders in health, bioscience, technology and government to develop an action plan for enabling precision medicine.
In its initial phase, the Me For You campaign asks people to upload a photo of themselves and pledge to take ownership of their own health and the health of their loved ones. But as barriers to a more personal future of medicine are knocked down and the ability to safely share genetic or medical data becomes available, it will ask for deeper commitments.
A number of precision medicine projects are already underway, including a project with Kaiser Permanente that’s creating a diverse genetic databank that will become part of a publicly available database run by NIH.
