NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – The Precision Medicine Initiative has begun enrolling beta testers into its All of Us research program.
The PMI was launched in 2015 by President Barack Obama, and it aims to amass genetic, health, lifestyle, and environmental information on one million people to fuel research into personalized healthcare. The All of Us program, formerly known as the PMI Cohort Program, is recruiting participants for this effort.
In a statement, All of US Research Program Director Eric Dishman noted that the team is starting small with enrollment, beginning with just one site, before ramping it up to more than a hundred sites during the beta phase. Dishman, a former VP of Intel's health and life sciences group, was hired in July 2016 by the National Institutes of Health to oversee enrollment.
The institutes involved will be working on a staggered schedule though the fall, Dishman added. In the beginning, those sites will be enrolling only a handful of patients each day. Eventually, the PMI hopes to enroll 10,000 people as beta testers.
Dishman said beta testers will enable the researchers to uncover problems with their systems and processes and allow them to fix those issues before even greater numbers of participants are enrolled in the study.
Thus far, the program has conducted preliminary pilot studies and focus groups, and has developed a research protocol, including surveys. It has also built an IT system to securely transfer and store data.
The beta testers will be trying out the research protocol and technology systems.
Eventually, the cohort is to include one million people from all over the US.