747,000 people. That is the bodies-in-the-room number for the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us research programme. But the number researchers care about is smaller: 535,000 whole genomes, each linked to 482,000 electronic health records.
The bundle includes doctor’s notes, diagnoses, and lab results. The NIH announced the milestone on June 30.
By the numbers, this vaults past the UK Biobank. That repository holds genomes and health records for about 500,000 participants. But its pool is almost entirely people with white European ancestry.
That limits clinical implications for other groups. The All of Us database recruits from diverse backgrounds across the United States.
What the numbers reveal is a shift in scale. The UK Biobank started collecting data in 2006. All of Us began in 2018.
In less than a decade, it has assembled the world’s largest integrated health database combining human genomes with clinical records. The difference is not just size. It is composition.
The database pairs genetic information with real-world data from electronic health records. It adds wearable technology such as Fitbits.
Health surveys on socioeconomic factors are included. Location-based exposure data — including air quality — is in the mix. That means researchers can look at a person’s genes, their doctor visits, their daily step count, their income bracket, and the pollution they breathe.
All in one place. Alicia Martin, a statistical geneticist at the Broad Institute, already uses All of Us data to build and test risk prediction tools.
She said one of the most exciting components is its sheer diversity. The database, she said, “offers forward-thinking opportunities to try to understand not just who is at risk of disease, but also who is more likely to progress or have some exacerbated health condition, and who is going to respond to specialised treatments.” The bottom line is this is a data set built for the personalised medicine era. Researchers can now investigate potential causes of and treatments for disease across a population that reflects the actual United States.
The UK Biobank cannot do that. Its numbers are large. Its diversity is not. 747,000 participants. 535,000 whole genomes. 482,000 electronic health records.
Those are the numbers. What they add up to is a tool for asking questions about disease risk, progression, and treatment response in people who have been left out of genomic research.
That is the difference between a database and a database that matters. The programme started in 2018. It took six years to reach this point.
The NIH announced the milestone on June 30. The data is already in use.
Martin and others are building risk prediction tools with it. Those tools will be tested on the same diverse population that generated the data. That is the point. 747,000 participants.
That is the headline number. The number that matters is what they represent: a research resource that includes people who have been invisible in genomic studies. The UK Biobank made its mark with 500,000 participants.
All of Us has passed that mark. It has also passed it in diversity.
That is the number that will change how medicine works.
