U of California, Irvine to Launch Institute for Precision Health

To address challenges such as health equity and the cost of care, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) announced the launch of the Institute for Precision Health (IPH).

The institute will utilize UCI’s health sciences, engineering, machine learning, artificial intelligence, clinical genomics, and data science capabilities to deliver personalized care.

Precision medicine is a topic of growing interest among healthcare stakeholders. The technique involves collecting patient data including, history, exams, demographics, molecular, and diagnostic tests, and using AI to develop personalized treatment options.

“What we’re doing at the Institute for Precision Health is perhaps the most important step we’ll take in this generation to improve health and well-being,” Steve AN Goldstein, MD, PhD, UCI’s vice chancellor for health affairs, said in a press release. “The ever-evolving capabilities of the IPH herald a future of personally tailored care that fundamentally alters the healthcare landscape to place the patient at the center and in control.”

“In the past, individuals were treated based on approaches thought to be best for groups of patients. Now we begin the IPH epoch of patient-centric care designed to continuously improve the health of the individual within their community, even as new knowledge accrues, whereby rights, incentives, transparency, and control remain the purview of the patient,” Goldstein continued.

According to the press release, the IPH will allow for collaboration across disciplines in seven ways:

• SMART (statistics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence) will design software to integrate and analyze health records, molecular data, and observations.
• A2IR (applied artificial intelligence research) will create practical solutions to real-world clinical problems for cost-effective, value-based care.
• A3 (applied analytics and artificial intelligence) will bring solutions to inpatient, ambulatory, and community settings and supports pilot applications.
• Precision omics will generate, analyze, and apply genomic, proteomic, and chemical data.
• Collaboratory for health and wellness (powered by Syntropy) will house the analytics platforms and patient-controlled data at the core of the IPH ecosystem.
• Deployable health equity will employ machine learning and artificial intelligence to create solutions narrowing the disparities gap in the health and well-being of vulnerable populations.
• Education and training efforts will bring courses, seminars, certificates, and degrees in statistics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, omics, and bioinformatics to practitioners and students.

Goldstein noted that bringing together different disciplines is critical to the success of IPH and advancing healthcare practices.

“This is the giant leap for healthcare. It’s glaringly clear that precision health is how to increase the quality of care, to decrease the cost of care – by both improving how it’s delivered and matching cost to value – and to deliver quality healthcare to the underserved,” Goldstein said.

Additionally, a major goal of IPH is to develop new methods to tackle illnesses lacking in successful therapy techniques.

“For many diseases – especially neurodegenerative ones like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and even Huntington’s, where the causal gene is known – there are simply no treatments available that change their course. We’re excited because we know that with precision health, we have the potential to define diseases better, understand them better, and treat them far better,” said Leslie Thompson, IPH's co-director, in the news release. “We expect major breakthroughs.”

IPH will have a center on the UCI campus that will serve as a hub for educating data-informed clinicians to practice at the top of their licenses, a site for the infrastructure to facilitate translational research, a place for community outreach, and a venue for commercial collaborations.

Industry leaders, including Syntropy and MITRE, and community partners, such as Children’s Health of Orange County and the VA Long Beach Healthcare System, will work with IPH to leverage UCI’s data capabilities.

“For patients, the message is that UCI’s Institute for Precision Health is the future of your care and well-being,” Goldstein said. “For the research community, IPH is a wide-open opportunity for discoveries that matter. IPH is ready to partner to advance new, cost-effective care for the business community. And for the philanthropic community – the folks who are determined to change the world – this is it. This is your chance.”