Live from Precision Medicine World Conference 2024 (PMWC): Celebrating Luminary Award Winner Geoffrey S. Ginsburg

I’m so excited to attend the Precision Medicine World Conference 2024 (@PMWC2024, PMWC - Precision Medicine World Conference , Tal Behar ) this week in Silicon Valley as a LinkedIn blogger, wherein I’ll be covering various sessions and sharing my key takeaways. This has long been a dream of mine – can’t wait to share (get ready for 2 posts a day from me)! 

To kick off the conference, I attended the PMWC 2024 Award Ceremony for Geoffrey S. Ginsburg, the Chief Medical and Scientific Officer for the NIH’s All of Us program. This was especially exciting for me since I’ve gotten to know Geoff on a personal level over the last few months and will soon be helping the All of Us team with their AI strategy!

Presented at the Precision Medicine World Conference 2024, the PMWC Luminary Award is a prestigious honor that recognizes the recent contributions of preeminent figures who have significantly accelerated the integration of precision medicine into clinical practice. This award is a testament to the impactful work and advancements made by leading professionals in the field of precision medicine, highlighting their innovative efforts and achievements

🏆 Celebrating Precision Medicine Pioneer: Geoffrey Ginsburg

Geoffrey Ginsburg, M.D., Ph.D., is a key figure in advancing precision medicine. Notably leading the All of Us program, Ginsburg is responsible for setting the scientific vision and strategy, as well as overseeing the program’s collection and curation of data.  Prior to joining All of Us, Ginsburg was founding director for the Center for Applied Genomics & Precision Medicine in the Duke University School of Medicine where he pioneered translational genomics and the development of novel diagnostics.

🌍 About All of Us: The All of Us program is building one of the most diverse and richest health databases in American history. The goal is to have one million people from across the U.S. provide as much health data as possible for researchers to learn how our biology, lifestyle, and environment affect health. This has the power to be revolutionary! What’s more, this data can currently be accessed by researchers with an accredited institution through the All of Us Research Workbench. If you’re interested in learning more, signing up, or accessing the research workbench, click here.

🔍 Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: Ginsburg's work emphasizes the inclusion of underrepresented groups in precision medicine databases, which has been missing from most historical data collections (most are comprised of self-identified white individuals). The All of Us program aims to have 50% of participants come from non-white ethnicities. Currently over 700,000 individuals are participating in the program and ~47% of those participants are non-white (the program is very close to its goal of 50%)! Additionally, ~80% of participants are from groups that have been historically underrepresented in biomedical groups (such as those in rural communities, those who are older or younger than those who typically participate in studies, etc.).

🧬 Participants Receive Valuable Insights: The program aims to provide value to all participants. One of the ways it’s doing that is by sequencing the genomes of participants and providing the results for free, which can then inform their health decisions. Starting in December 2022, the program has returned around 5,000 genomic results each week (and has already returned results to over 170,000 participants, around 25% of participants).

💡 Key Insight: Real-world clinical evidence should inform research areas. Ginsburg's vision is to meld clinical care with basic research, fostering a cycle where each informs the other for better patient outcomes. Ginsburg recognizes the potential for the All of Us data to serve as a foundational platform wherein clinical data flows in through connected EHRs, informing research areas, whose findings then flow back into the clinic through updated guidelines/diagnostics, etc., which can help the next patient.

📊 Exciting Milestone: The All of Us program has just crossed the threshold of 300 publications based off its data, already showcasing the impact of this data in generating important findings for the scientific community. One of the program’s goals is to have 10,000 researchers at the All of Us workbench, wherein researchers from accredited institutions can use the data, by 2026. This past year, the program surpassed 8,500 researchers, indicating the program is well on its way to achieve the goal.

📈  Watch Out For: There will be a paper coming out this month highlighting genomic findings from the All of Us program. So far, the genomic data contains over 1 billion variants not seen in other data. Like I said above, this program is a game changer.

Here's to Geoffrey Ginsburg's remarkable journey and the future strides in precision medicine he's set to lead! If you have any questions, comments, or ideas, please reach out.

#PMWC24 #PrecisionMedicine #Innovation #HealthcareLeadership #DiversityInScience #AllOfUs