DOI: 10.5683/sp2/ruawjp
title: Precision Health for Alberta—A Prospectus

description: ‘Precision Health’ – the emerging new medical model - is positioned to transform Alberta’s health outcomes and significantly contribute to its economic diversification strategy. The task given to us was to develop a prospectus for Alberta’s Academic Health Network (AAHN) to guide further development of Precision Health across the Province of Alberta. We had the enthusiastic support of 25 knowledgeable individuals on our Precision Health Working Group, representing a variety of organizations. We also spoke at length with scores of others. We were impressed with the open willingness to work together across organizational boundaries, to seek new collaborations, and to look for synergistic opportunities. In short, the culture is collaborative, aware of Alberta’s need to prepare for Precision Health, and supportive of change. There are several terms used to describe components of Precision Health (PH). These include Personalized Medicine, Precision Medicine, Precision Public Health, and Stratified Health among others (Khoury, M. 2015; Medical Research Council, 2017; National Research Council 2011). Each of these terms captures a distinct part of the Precision Health spectrum. We elected to use the term adopted by Genome Canada, ‘Precision Health’, to represent the widest spectrum of Precision Medicine and Precision Public Health (Genome Canada, 2016). Thus the scope is broad—and includes the spectrum of health research (fundamental, clinical, health services, and environmental and social aspects) and activities that support clinical adoption, policy development, commercialization and economic development as it relates to Precision Health. There is a plethora of activity in Precision Health in the Province today. Unfortunately, most of this activity, though high in quality, is small in scale and isolated. There is no overriding schema, framework, or unifying theme that links the many activities. The scope of Precision Health in Alberta ranges from fundamental scientific research, to using Alberta’s current data infrastructure to improve public health, to changing delivery of health services for carefully delineated populations and disease groups. Unfortunately, the lack of any overarching organizing strategy or goals creates little or no synergy between the efforts underway. With the scope and pace of change globally, this is a significant and urgent problem. While the focus of much of our work was on the activities under way in Alberta, Precision Health is a vast global undertaking with contributions from governments, research institutes, commercial enterprises, and from health system delivery organizations. The pace of change is staggering. With this scale of competition, it is easy to forget that Alberta has a unique advantage in its ability to link all health data for a complete population of just over four million persons. This advantage could be turned into increased economic development and better health, particularly if the available health data also included genetic information and was linked to the Provincial Government’s social services databases for the purpose of better understanding the complex interactions with social determinants of health.