The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is awarding $5.4 million in first-year funding to establish a new program that supports the integration of genomics into learning health systems. Present in many hospitals across the United States, learning health systems are a type of clinical practice that bridges research and patient care.
These systems use a variety of methods to continually analyze patient data. Clinicians then use the results of those analyses to refine practices and improve future care. The new Genomics-enabled Learning Health System (gLHS) Network aims to identify and advance approaches for integrating genomic information into existing learning health systems.
As genomic testing becomes increasingly common, more and more genomic data are available in clinical settings, and learning health systems present an opportunity to translate this evidence quickly and directly into improvements in medical care. The network consists of six clinical study sites and a coordinating center, all of which have an operating learning health system. Each clinical site will propose a project that uses patient data to develop and refine some aspect of genomic medicine.
These could include implementing testing for hereditary diseases or using genomic information to select which medications a patient is given. The network also includes a coordinating center, which will select a set of projects that both seem feasible in the program's five-year duration and have the potential to be share.
