Obama Says People Who Give Genetic Samples for Research Should Own the Data; Slate.com, 2/26/16

Lily Hay Newman, Slate.com; Obama Says People Who Give Genetic Samples for Research Should Own the Data:

"On Thursday the White House held a summit to discuss progress on its Precision Medicine Initiative, first announced last year. The program has consistently emphasized that privacy and security are among its priorities when it comes to research data, but on Thursday President Barack Obama waded deeper into a debate about rights and ownership when subjects contribute their genetic information to studies.

But amid hopeful suggestions about how this data could improve medicine in the future, Obama pointed to an inherent tension in collecting the data.

"It requires, first of all, us understanding who owns the data," Obama said. "And I would like to think that if somebody does a test on me or my genes, that that's mine. But that's not always how we define these issues, right? So there’s some legal issues involved.""

The challenge of saving lives with 'big data'; BBC News, 2/7/16

BBC News; The challenge of saving lives with 'big data' :

"As part of the soon-to-be-opened Big Data Institute in Oxford, more than 500 scientists will take up the challenge of handling the Biobank data and analysing it.

Before, researchers were full of questions they wanted to ask about human health - but had to wait years to find out the answers.

"They now have the opportunity to ask those questions in rapid time," Prof Landray says...

Research based on small numbers of patients contains too many errors, particularly when it comes to analysing the risk factors for diseases.

"We crave information about large numbers of people over long periods," he says. "That way, you get rid of the play of chance."

In the US, President Obama recently launched a Precision Medicine Initiative which plans to gather "big data" to develop more individualised care.

In China, a study of 500,000 people is doing something similar which means it will be possible to compare and contrast the health of entire populations in the not too distant future."