Uc Science Today

Precision medicine should change the way researchers conduct experimental studies. That’s according to pediatric surgeon Hanmin Lee of the University of California, San Francisco. “All the studies that are currently done right now and all the data that is collected is generally on one subset of patients which is generally older white men. But for let’s say young under-represented female minority patients, the implication of this manifestation, this disease, might be far different.“ So, Lee says scientists should make studies more inclusive. “And we can only get to that if we look at large data sets as opposed to what we’ve done historically in the past, which is looking at a 100 or 200 patients in a trial.” Lee hopes the era of electronic medical records will give researchers and doctors access to a large volume of reliable data, which will help make studies and medicine more precise.