Areas of Focus

Precision Health has created focus areas to support the efforts of U-M faculty engaging in precision health research.

Cohort Development

Cohort Development oversees the recruitment, engagement, and retention of participants and data. This includes continuing the work of the Michigan Genomics Initiative (MGI), which currently includes data from more than 50,000 patients and encompasses other projects that collect and manage patient data that can advance precision health initiatives. This group aims to develop a large, diverse, and broadly representative cohort that is centrally managed with consistent data elements, consent, and processes to enable rich research and implementation opportunities. Some 12,000 additional participants per year will be added to this cohort to expand a rich data repository that supports discovery and innovative care.

Data Analytics & IT

Data Analytics & IT will provide the support and infrastructure for sophisticated and timely data access and analysis to enhance precision health research and implementation. With responsibility for deploying an effective compute and storage infrastructure, as well as providing tools for data cleaning/retrieval/management, analysis/visualization, and analytics reporting, this group is tasked with creating and delivering responsive systems that will fuel precision health research.

Education & Training

With a growing need for an informed research and practitioner community, Education & Training will connect trainees with opportunities to advance in a career in precision health research, as well as provide training opportunities for new and established clinicians to gain a deep understanding of how to implement precision health into effective patient care. This group will also support development of university-wide courses to incorporate precision health principles into medical and health education.

Health Implementation

Identifying and defining practical processes for precision health to be implemented at the patient level will be the main focus of Health Implementation. This group will be focused on closing the gap between discovery and implementation, enabling improved patient care by working closely with health systems, and developing ways to ensure that newly discovered findings can be put into practice and deliver on the promise of Precision Health.

To get involved with any of our focus areas, contact us at precisionhealth@umich.edu.