Dr. Lussier, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics and associate vice president for data science and chief knowledge officer at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, will discuss "Delivering Better Treatments Through Data-Driven Science: Post-Genomics Advances in Precision Medicine."
Yves A. Lussier, MD, director of the Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics and associate vice president for data science and chief knowledge officer at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, was invited to give the keynote address at the Precision Medicine Day, sponsored by the Center for Precision Health at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, on April 13.
Dr. Lussier’s keynote is “Delivering Better Treatments Through Data-Driven Science: Post-Genomics Advances in Precision Medicine.”
Precision Medicine Day features experts from UTHealth and national leaders in precision medicine who will discuss how precision medicine is integrating research disciplines and clinical care in guiding individualized patient care. The event fosters peer-to-peer networking and provides opportunities to explore collaboration with other researchers, participating guests and external partners who are working to bring precision medicine to the forefront of health care.
About Dr. Lussier
Dr. Lussier also is associate director for cancer informatics and precision health at the UA Cancer Center, associate director of BIO5 Informatics, and professor of medicine with the UA College of Medicine – Tucson.
A professional engineer and physician-scientist, Dr. Lussier is an international expert in translational bioinformatics and a pioneer in research informatics techniques, including systems biology, data representation through ontologies and high-throughput methods in personalized medicine. Dr. Lussier’s research interests focus on the use of knowledge technologies and genomic network model to accurately individualize the treatment of disease and to repurpose therapies.
At the UA Health Sciences, he is leading efforts to fully develop novel programs in biomedical informatics, computational genomics and precision health. Dr. Lussier provides critical leadership in efforts to advance precision health approaches to health outcomes and health-care delivery and in the development of big data analytical tools and resource services in support of the University’s clinical research and service missions.
Dr. Lussier was invited to attend the Precision Medicine Initiative Summit held in February 2016 in Washington, D.C., at which the UA Health Sciences committed to translating large-scale clinical and genomic data into actionable individual patient outcomes through the UAHS Center for Biomedical Informatics and Biostatistics and UAHS Center for Applied Genetics and Genomic Medicine.
About the All of UsSM Research Program at the UA Health Sciences
Precision medicine is an emerging approach for disease treatment and prevention that takes into account individual variability in environment, lifestyle and genes for each person, according to the National Institutes of Health. In July, the UA Health Sciences and Banner Health were awarded a grant from the NIH to participate in the Precision Medicine Initiative® (PMI) Cohort Program—recently renamed the All of UsSM Research Program—the largest health and medical research program on precision medicine of its kind. The award, which totals $43.3 million over five years, is the largest NIH peer-reviewed grant in Arizona history. The All of UsSM Research Program aims to enroll 1 million participants living in the United States to improve prevention and treatment of disease based on individual differences in lifestyle, environment and genetics. Health information contributed by participants will form the basis of a privacy-protected data set—accessible to researchers across the country—that will accelerate precision medicine discoveries. Participants also will have access to their information. The program aims to leverage advances in genomics, emerging methods for managing and analyzing large data sets while protecting privacy, and health information technology to accelerate biomedical discoveries. For more information, visit the UA-Banner pre-interest website at allofusaz.uahs.arizona.edu