01 Mar Note from Dr. Ralph Snyderman and Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg, PMWC 2017 Duke Program Co-Chairs:PMWC Duke – Translating the Power of Precision Technologies into Better Health Care
We are excited to launch the first East Coast Precision Medicine World Conference, the 12th PMWC, at Duke University on May 24-25.
We are witnessing an explosion of biomedical technologies that are spurring exciting capabilities and initiatives to enable the translation of precision medicine into improvements in health care. Precision medicine is already leaving its mark in oncology and is expanding rapidly into other therapeutic areas. These technological and medical advances, as well as their applications to improve health care, are reflected in the content-rich two-day agenda of the PMWC 2017 Duke conference, which is a cross-section through the world of precision medicine with the goal of increasing tailored approaches to the treatment of diseases and improvement of health.
Looking ahead, we will continue to see:
- Further adoption of sequencing for rare and undiagnosed diseases and for a selection of targeted therapeutics; moving to single cell biology, and more widespread use for drug discovery and health diagnostics.
- Testing moving closer to the patient – while the discovery of more genomic biomarkers will help stratify populations, the development of more targeted therapies are aimed at narrow patient populations.
- The rise of the wearable as a phenotype – the vast proliferation of mobile health technologies and the use of apps is converging with genomic and other data to provide the ‘movie’ of health and disease (vs the traditional episodic ‘snapshot’) revealing novel phenotypes and the development of predictive diagnostics in the clinic.
- Continuous data explosion and the need for scalable and secure solutions embedded in a supportive infrastructure.
- A rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence, adapting genomic discoveries to fit clinical needs, creating solutions that support global data sharing, sophisticated knowledge extraction and actionable findings reporting – particularly integrated into the electronic health record – and mechanisms that help manage and protect your (own genome) data.
- Changes in regulation and clinical care delivery to enhance the adoption of effective precision medicine technologies.
A sneak peek into the developing program promises an exciting upcoming conference, centered around topics such as data science to advance precision medicine, the importance of patient engagement, the impact of technology to drive genomics and medical practice, updates on data and regulatory policies, metabolomics in precision medicine, the emergence of single cell genomics, monitoring infectious disease, an update on the PMI, mobile health and how it is changing healthcare, liquid biopsy, the microbiome, and much more – for more information see the developing themes.
Please join us and an exciting lineup of speakers, which includes among others, Francis S. Collins, Robert M. Califf, Chris Cournoyer, Kathy Giusti, Richard Klausner, Mark Levin, Keith R. Yamamoto, Janet Woodcock and more on May 24-25 for PMWC 2017 Duke to hear first-hand about “translating the power of precision technologies into better health care”.
Looking forward to seeing you at PMWC 2017 Duke,
Dr. Ralph Snyderman
Co-Program Chair
Chancellor Emeritus, Duke U.
Director, Center for Research on Personalized Health Care
Dr. Geoffrey Ginsburg
Co-Program Chair
Director, Duke MEDx 2017 Duke
Director, Duke Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine
