The Illusion of Average: Renewing Research Infrastructure

Imagine a doctor using information unique to your body, environment, and life history to treat you and prevent problems from occurring. This vision is at the heart of the $215 million U.S. Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI). At its core, PMI asks the question “What treatments will work when, where, and for whom?” This question appears deceptively simple, but belies a highly complex issue that requires careful management of efforts across research projects. Efficiently building knowledge about individualized care requires major investment in public infrastructure and refreshing legacy regulatory processes to better integrate innovations and insights generated by citizen-led science.

In this third talk in the New Tools series, Dr. William T. Riley and Paul Tarini will discuss their experiences with establishing research portfolios to support research in an age of personalization. Dr. Riley will provide insights into public sector management based on his work with PMI and to transition the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) to a “data rich” endeavor integrating behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences for human health outcomes. He will also speak to balancing this transition in an office with a policy advising and public communications mission. Mr. Tarini will discuss the goals and mission of the Pioneering Ideas portfolio within the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). His particular emphasis will be on cultivating research at boundary of new modes of inquiry and discovery for a national “Culture of Health.” Dr. Eric Hekler will moderate the session to draw out questions, challenges, and strategies facing public and private research managers advancing scientific research for human health.