PRECISION MEDICINE: DATA AND DISCOVERY FOR IMPROVED HEALTH AND THERAPY

The major goal of precision medicine is to improve human health. A feature that unites much research in the field is the use of large datasets such as genomic data and electronic health records. Research in this field includes examination of variation in the core bases of DNA and their methylation status, through variations in metabolic and signaling molecules, all the way up to broader systems level changes in physiology and disease presentation. Intermediate goals include understanding the individual drivers of disease that differentiate the cause of disease in each individual. To match this development of approaches to physical and activity-based measurements, computational approaches to using these new streams of data to better understand improve human health are being rapidly developed by the thriving biomedical informatics research community. This session of the 2017 Pacific Symposium of Biocomputing presents some of the latest advances in the capture, analysis and use of diverse biomedical data in precision medicine.