Translating translational medicine into global health equity: What is needed?

Publication date: Available online 10 March 2016 Source:Applied & Translational Genomics Author(s): Carol Isaacson Barash While genomics, and other omics research is rapidly advancing in the US and Europe progress has been slower in less resourced countries. The imbalance has given rise to concern about whether the benefits of these advances, new and better tests, treatments, risk identification, prevention strategies will be shared and available to those living in less resourced reaches of the globe. In effort to give voice to researchers, an informal survey about barriers to advancing translational medicine was administered to attendees of the 11th Asia Pacific Conference on Human Genetics, 2015, Hanoi. The overall goal of the survey was to identify unmet needs and rank their importance. Most attendees completed the survey. While not surprisingly funding is indicated as a major need, results indicate that lack of bioinformatics and computational tools, trained data scientists and access to datasets are creating a significant lag behind better resourced regions. Results are intended to inform efforts to create a regional consensus statement of need. Such a regional statement could help funding organizations and policy makers seeking to promote global genomics benefit sharing.

Source: Applied and Translational Genomics - March 11, 2016 Category: Genetics & Stem Cells Source Type: research