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• Research Efforts and Incentives

Research Efforts and Incentives

A flourishing research environment is helping to advance personalized medicine. Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is making important contributions to the field. This research is, for example, identifying genetic contributors to a growing range of common diseases and conditions, helping to shift the focus of medicine from treatment of acute disease, to disease management, to prevention. NIH is also leading collaborative efforts to establish bioinformatics capabilities like the cancer Biomedical Informatics grid (caBIG^®) and the BIG Health Consortium™ that are essential components of personalized health care. These research activities should be supported and expanded.

While personalized medicine holds substantial promise, it also introduces significant complexity and additional uncertainty into the research and development process for diagnostics and therapeutics. Incentives for private sector research could help accelerate development and introduction of personalized medicine technologies that improve quality and value in health care.