California Gov. Jerry Brown appoints precision medicine advisory committee

California Gov. Jerry Brown has formed a precision health advisory committee stocked with some of the state’s foremost experts in data, genomics and population health.

The committee of experts will make recommendations to the governor regarding precision medicine policy issues like data sharing and privacy, patient and provider engagement and the economic impact of personalized treatments, according to an announcement.

The committee will support the California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, announced by the governor in 2015 and backed by $3 million in state funding. Since then, California has invested another $10 million in to support precision medicine demonstration projects and develop an inventory of assets across the state, including databases, analytics platforms, clinical implantation support and venture capital.

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The advisory committee features several well-known precision health experts, including Atul Butte, M.D., recently picked to lead a Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-backed research initiative at the University of California San Francisco to consolidate health data across five UC medical center into one research database. Representatives from UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, UC San Diego, UC Southern California and Stanford are also included, along with Stephen Hockhart, M.D., chief medical officer for Sutter Health.

Several of those organizations have begun their own precision health initiatives. UC’s five cancer centers recently announced a new consortium aimed at advancing cancer diagnosis and treatment through precision medicine. Sutter Health’s chief technology officer has said the system’s push to move databases to the cloud over the next two years will advance precision medicine by combining genomic data with clinical records.

The committee will have input from the private sector as well, including Sue Siegel, CEO of GE Ventures and Jessica Mega, chief medical officer at Verily Life Sciences.