Planning for US Precision Medicine Initiative underway.

While continuing to defend his besieged health-care reform law against lawsuits and repeal threats, US President Barack Obama is championing a new health initiative. This one also has a bold goal: to radically change the medical treatment patients receive in the USA. “I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine—one that delivers the right treatment at the right time“, the President said when he unveiled his Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) in his annual State of the Union address to the nation in January. The idea isn’t entirely new Obama reminded top medical and scientifi c experts at a White House meeting 10 days later. “Doctors have always recognised that every patient is unique, and doctors have always tried to tailor their treatments as best they can to individuals”, he told the gathering. “You can match a blood transfusion to a blood type. That was an important discovery. What if matching a cancer cure to our genetic code was just as standard?” Central to the PMI will be the creation of a research cohort of 1 million US volunteers who agree to provide researchers with biological, environmental, lifestyle, and other information as well as tissue samples.