Personalized Health Project holds summit at QB3-UCSF

The Personalized Health Project held a “take action” summit on Tuesday, April 26 with prominent leaders in the life sciences to discuss the gaps occurring between new discoveries in science and their implementation for patients and people. Sponsored by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the meeting gathered together about 45 leaders from science, business, investors, government, the media, global health, patient advocacy groups, the wellness movement, and ”Health 2.0”.

Details of the meeting and the PHP are on the PHP website.

“A new era of healthcare, driven by new ideas and technologies, is poised to shift the emphasis on individuals staying healthy as much as on treating the sick,” said PHP organizer David Ewing Duncan. “This new era however, is being impeded by outdated notions and processes that can and should be fixed.”

The meeting was triggered by the release of a study published last January by the Kauffman Foundation titled: “The Personalized Health Project: Identifying the gaps between discover and application in the life sciences, and proposed solutions.”

The paper identifies 11 barriers that are preventing the adoption of new technologies, processes and discoveries in healthcare; a universe of idea and proposals that have ben proposed to remove the barriers; and action plans to accelerate the adoption of a healthcare system that is based as much on prediction and prevention of disease as it is on treating illness. The study also explores the effect of new technologies such as genomics in terms of ethics, law, politics, and the impact on society.

An expert panel of 36 leaders in life sciences and related field contributed to and reviewed the 82-page paper, which was accompanied by a 2-page “Personalized Health Manifesto” endorsed by the expert panel and others. Read the manifesto here, and the list of endorsees. Read the long paper here.

The summit featured short talks and presentations on “gaps”, solutions, and action proposals from Harvard geneticist George Church; venture capitalist Brook Byers; wellness doctor Dean Ornish; White House science and technology advisor Michael Stebbins; PatientsLikeMe co-founder James Heywood; Cleveland Clinic’s Charis Eng; Wired Magazine’s Thomas Goetz; global health expert Sir Richard Feachem, and many more.

Participants discussed three “action proposals”:

The Link: a virtual, community-based map that catalogues and links up personalized health projects, entrepreneurs, products, tests, labs, investors, and other facets. (More here).
The Blueprint: a web-based master plan for accelerating a collective personalized health agenda. (More here)
The Fund for Human Integration: an idea for creating a public-private fund to invest in personalized health projects that are focused on the needs of patients and clinicians. (More here).

The Summit was sponsored by The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and Wells Fargo; meeting co-organizers were the Kauffman Foundation; The California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at the University of California at San Francisco; The P4 Medicine Institute; Cleveland Clinic Genomic Medicine Institute; The Personalized Medicine Coalition; and The Center for Life Science Policy, UC Berkeley.

ABOUT THE PERSONALIZED HEALTH PROJECT: The PHP is an exploratory effort by a group of life science leaders – scientists, nonprofits, entrepreneurs, investors, policy experts, patient advocates, journalists and others – who believe that a concerted effort is needed to transform the rash of new discoveries and technologies in biomedicine into practical applications.