Earlier this year, President Obama presented a plan to launch the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI), an ambitious research effort to recruit over one million participants in a long-term effort to understand the individual characteristics of health and disease. The research effort will aggregate clinical data as well as behavioral and environmental data – including, potentially, sensor data from smartphones and wearables – which will, needless to say, require careful security precautions and wise privacy policies.

The PMI advisory board invited THaW researcher David Kotz to a summer workshop on the potential for mobile technology in collecting data for PMI, and specifically to comment on mechanisms to support privacy.  The PMI’s proposed Privacy and Trust Principles are an interesting read! [pdf]

Today, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) gathered a dozen thought leaders – including THaW team members Darren Lacey and David Kotz – to advise them as they begin developing a security framework for the Precision Medicine Initiative.  This fascinating discussion was led by Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil, and is just the first step in developing a comprehensive security framework for this important national research initiative.