May 3, 2023: In This Friday’s PCT Grand Rounds, All of Us Brings Big Cohorts to Precision Medicine

Photo of Dr. Joshua Denny
Dr. Joshua Denny, All of Us Research Program (Photo: Vanderbilt University Medical Center)

In this Friday’s PCT Grand Rounds, Joshua Denny of the All of Us Research Program at NIH, will present All of Us Research Program: Improving Health Through Diverse Technology, Huge Cohorts, and Precision Medicine.” The Grand Rounds session will be held on Friday, May 5, 2023, at 1:00 pm eastern.

Dr. Denny is the chief executive officer of the All of Us Research Program, which is building a diverse database that can inform thousands of studies on a variety of health conditions.

Join the online meeting.

In Nature: The Precision Medicine Initiative & DNA Data Sharing


A recent article in Nature highlights the Precision Medicine Initiative, launched in January 2015 and spearheaded by the National Institutes of Health. Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. This initiative will involve collection of data on genomes, electronic health records, and physiological measurements from 1 million participants. A main objective is for participants to be active partners in research.

But a major decision faced by the initiative’s working group is how much information to share with participants about disease risk, particularly genetic data. Though there is much debate in the field, the article suggests that public opinion on data sharing may be shifting toward openness.

The Precision Medicine Initiative working group will be releasing a plan soon. For details on the goals of the Precision Medicine Initiative, read the perspective by NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins in the New England Journal of Medicine.