More walking helps against type of heart condition (News clip ft. Dr. Brahmajee Nallamothu from Fox2 Detroit

To enhance the usefulness of Michigan Genomics Initiative data for conducting PGx studies, MGI provides in-silico inferences for star alleles & activity phenotypes for 13 important pharmacogenes affecting drug response, including enzymes and transporters, using the state-of-the-art PyPGx software. The provided inferences enables researchers to conduct PGx studies in MGI, facilitating the understanding of genetic predictors of treatment related to efficacy or toxicity without the expertise necessary to translate genotype data or the need to perform laboratory work.

Yi Li, Professor of Biostatistics, and his team collaborated on a project on the risk factors associated with COVID-19 outcomes, utilizing Precision Health resources and data including chest x-ray imaging to support this research.

Congratulations to 27 Precision Health members, whose Sept 2023 promotions were approved by the University of Michigan Board of Regents & Office of the Provost!

Precision Health is happy to announce the spring 2023 Precision Health member cohort, welcoming more than 25 new member faculty/researchers from Engineering, Education, Nursing, Social Work, LSA, Public Health, Information, Medicine, Pharmacy, and Dentistry—a wide diversity of expertise which reflects the collaborative nature of precision health research.

In a recent study published in Critical Care Medicine, researchers from Michigan Medicine, Precision Health, the Weil Institute for Critical Care Research & Innovation, and Hurley Medical Center (Flint, MI) analyzed data from more than 11,000 hospital encounters to externally validate a predictive analytic originally developed at the Weil Institute, called PICTURE (Predicting Intensive Care Transfers and other UnfoReseen Events). PICTURE is a machine learning algorithm that utilizes EHR data to predict ICU transfer or death as a proxy for patient deterioration in hospital settings.

In the study, the team examined whether the predictions made by PICTURE, developed at a single academic medical center, would generalize to a second community-oriented hospital that had significantly different patient demographics.

Opioids are substances such as Vicodin, OxyContin, and Percocet that are commonly prescribed by doctors to treat patients for moderate-to-severe pain relief, but research shows that about a third of patients misuse them, and a staggering three million Americans abuse them – often to the point of addiction or overdose.

And while opioid abuse has been getting significantly worse across America year after year over the past decade, one state has been more successful than any other in bucking the nationwide trend.

The efforts of public health officials and hospital workers in Michigan have been well documented over the past two years, altogether demonstrating an impressive 56% reduction in the number of opioid patients the state has. The state has also experienced a 26% drop in opioid abuse. Both declines significantly beat national trends of similar patients over the same period of time.