INTEGRATING COMMUNITY-LEVEL DATA RESOURCES FOR PRECISION MEDICINE RESEARCH

Precision Medicine focuses on collecting and using individual-level data to improve healthcare outcomes. To date, research efforts have been motivated by molecular-scale measurements, such as incorporating genomic data into clinical use. In many cases however, environmental, social, and economic factors are much more predictive of health outcomes, yet are not systematically used in clinical practice due to the difficulties in measurement and quantification. Advances in both the availability of electronic health information, environmental exposure data, and the more systematic use of geo-coding now provide ways to systematically assess community-level indicators of health, and link these factors to electronic health records for evaluating their influence on disease outcomes. In this workshop, we discuss new electronic sources of community-level data, and provide insight into their utility and validity when compared with gold-standard data collection approaches.