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Data Sets That Address All Our Diversity

2024 Future of Health Summit

Data Sets That Address All Our Diversity

Thursday, November 14, 2024
10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Salamander Washington DC - Gallery C

The Human Genome Project, completed over 20 years ago, heralded the frontier of individualized medicine. Since then, we have developed massive databases and biorepositories that form the critical backbone necessary for genetics-based interventions and precision diagnostics. While sequencing and the related data gathered in recent decades have been critical for biomedical research, these developments are not for all because many of the databases and repositories consist of data and samples collected primarily from populations of European ancestry. As a result, critical innovations like CRISPR, novel biomarkers, and AI analyses—based on biased datasets—can miss diagnoses and leave patients untreated. It is widely recognized that public health and biomedical research must prioritize data of all communities. Still, more should be done. Panelists will discuss the partnerships, forward-thinking, and active steps we need to take to ensure that the biomedical data being collected and deployed reflect the diverse span of the evolving population so that all may benefit from these remarkable medical advances.