Obama says precision medicine held back by ‘creaky’ health care system
Former President Barack Obama lauded the advances that researchers are making in precision medicine but lamented the sluggish pace of adoption of these technologies in the U.S. health care system at an event in San Diego on Wednesday.
In a fireside chat-style talk to about 2,000 attendees at the Illumina Genomics Forum, Obama pointed to his 2015 Precision Medicine Initiative, which aimed to jumpstart the rollout of personalized health care.
“I would say that we have continued to make enormous strides on the research side,” he said. “The cost for genetic sequencing has continued to go down, which means that it offers the potential for more people using it, doctors using it, insurance companies paying for it.
“To the extent that progress has been slower than I would have hoped, it has less to do with the particulars of precision medicine and has more do with the fact we still have a big, creaky, system that accounts for a sixth of the U.S. economy.”
Obama said the system has evolved so it is “more of a disease care system than a health care system. Until we reverse the incentive structure and the mindset inside that system, I suspect we are still going to have some problems.”
In a conversation that was at times relaxed and funny, inspirational and personal, Obama said his efforts in health policy, such as the Affordable Care Act, stem in part from his mother’s death from cancer at age 53.
“I witnessed not just the physical and mental toll that it took on her but the complexities of having to navigate a health care system that was deeply inefficient,” he said.
The former president shared the stage with Sonia Vallabh, who has a similar story. She co-leads research on the prevention of prion disease at the Broad Institute at Harvard and MIT. Formerly a lawyer, she switched careers to biomedical research after her mother died of rapid, undiagnosed dementia at age 52. Vallabh underwent genetic testing and learned that she had inherited the mutation, placing her at a very high risk of developing the same disease.
Illumina is the top maker of advanced genomic sequencing hardware, software and chemistry. It recently acquired Grail, which has launched an early detection diagnostic test that can uncover up to 50 different types of cancer from a single blood test. Antitrust regulators in the U.S. and Europe are seeking to unwind the acquisition.
Illumina Chief Executive Francis deSouza highlighted the progress DNA-based medicine has made in uncovering childhood diseases, cancer screening and rare diseases. More than 205 countries are using gene sequencing as part of global surveillance efforts to track COVID-19. And gene sequencing is increasingly being used in agriculture to adapt crops and livestock to climate change.
“These technologies have the potential to end food insecurity for hundreds of millions of people worldwide,” said deSouza.
The Illumina Genomics Forum continues through the rest of this week at the Manchester Grand Hyatt downtown. Bill Gates, Scott Gottlieb and tennis legend Chris Evert are among those scheduled to make presentations on global health and personalized medicine.