Personalized Medicine and the Power of Electronic Health Records

Abstract

Personalized medicine has largely been enabled by the integration of genomic and other data with electronic health records (EHRs) in the United States and elsewhere. Increased EHR adoption across various clinical settings and the establishment of EHR-linked population-based biobanks provide unprecedented opportunities for the types of translational and implementation research that drive personalized medicine. We review advances in the digitization of health information and the proliferation of genomic research in health systems and provide insights into emerging paths for the widespread implementation of personalized medicine.

Figure 1:

Selected population-based biobanks with current or planned genomic data linked to EHRs and ≥ 20,000 enrolled participants. The x-axis indicates the year in which enrollment started (information obtained from personal communication, press releases, recent publications or biobank websites; Supplementary Table 1) and the y-axis indicates the proportion non-European ancestry participants in each biobank. The size of the solid circles indicates sample size of enrolled participants in bins of 20K-100K, >100K-500K, and >500K. Color of the solid circles indicates region of the world in which the biobank is enrolling (per the colored map of the world). Biobanks are labeled by name and those indicated with an asterisk currently have or plan programs to return genomic results to participants.