In the US, we have the All of Us Research Program. In the UK, they have Our Future Health, an ambitious new population health research program that aims to make healthcare more preventive than reactive. Launched just four years ago, it has already recruited nearly three million volunteers toward a goal of five million, making it one of the world’s largest health research initiatives.
Today we’re joined by Raghib Ali, CEO and Principal Investigator of Our Future Health, to discuss how the program builds on the success of UK Biobank while pursuing a different goal. Rather than simply studying the causes of disease, Our Future Health aims to establish the evidence needed to move healthcare from diagnosis and treatment toward prediction and prevention.
Ali discusses the program’s plans to combine polygenic risk scores with clinical and lifestyle data to develop integrated disease risk scores. A new clinical trials platform will test whether personalized prevention actually improves outcomes. The ultimate ambition is to bring successful approaches into routine NHS care.
Perhaps most encouraging is the public response. More than a million participants have come from historically underrepresented groups, raising the possibility that precision medicine could help reduce health inequalities rather than widen them.
As Ali puts it, the goal is to move from a national sickness service to a true national health service.
