Maryland Launches Statewide Precision Health Initiative
University of Maryland Medicine is partnering with health tech company Vibrent Health to create the All of Maryland Precision Health Initiative, a statewide digital platform for studies examining how genes and other factors affect health.
The mission of All of Maryland — a study that will be led by University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) researchers — is to discover better ways to individualize healthcare. The goal is to enable individuals to benefit from treatments tailored to their own health profiles.
This data-driven study aims to enroll up to 250,000 volunteers across Maryland in order to identify and better understand the health needs of Marylanders by region and community. A particular focus will be on underserved populations who experience significant health disparities, causing more illness and shorter lifespans. The large-scale effort to collect broad sources of health data, including genetic information, will aid researchers in better understanding human genomic variation and its relationship to disease and treatment.
The study will be built on Fairfax, Va.-based Vibrent Health's Digital Health Solutions Platform, which includes an online portal and mobile applications for participants and a suite of software tools and services to support study partners and researchers. The study protocol will leverage Vibrent Health's experience in creating digital health platforms for the National Institutes of Health All of Us Research Program and other precision medicine initiatives. The digital platform enables data collection from e-consent, surveys, electronic health records, genomics, wearables, and other sources and provides return of value to participants based on collected data.
"This program will allow us to engage as partners with research participants who represent the rich diversity of our state,” said Alan Shuldiner, M.D., John L. Whitehurst Professor of Medicine and Associate Dean for Personalized & Genomic Medicine at UMSOM, in a statement. “We will integrate clinical informatics and mobile technologies with big data analytics to create a dynamic resource for research and learning healthcare environment delivery."
A similar project was launched in Nevada. The Healthy Nevada Project aspires to offer genetic testing to every Nevadan interested in learning more about their health and genetic profile. The pilot phase of the Healthy Nevada Project launched in September 2016, enrolling 10,000 Nevadans in just 48 hours, and within 60 working days, each participant had donated a DNA sample for genotyping.
