The NIH has handed researchers a bigger All of Us data set, and it arrives at a bad moment for the program’s budget. Funding fell to about $158 million in fiscal year 2025, roughly 71 percent below fiscal 2023, according to the agency.
The new release covers more than 747,000 participants. It links nearly 482,000 electronic health records to 535,000 whole-genome sequences, and it holds genomic, clinical, behavioral, environmental and wearable-device data. All of Us launched nationally in 2018 and is working toward at least 1 million participants, followed over time.
People in the program can contribute biospecimens, health record information, physical measurements, survey answers and data from wearables. Researchers reach it all through the All of Us Researcher Workbench, a secure cloud-based environment.
More variants, more people
The resource now contains more than 1.3 billion genetic variants. That lets scientists study common and rare differences alongside diagnoses, lab findings, medication use, socioeconomic factors and environmental exposures. An earlier analysis of 245,388 whole-genome sequences from the program found more than 1 billion variants, including over 275 million that had never been reported.
Diversity is the program’s stated focus. The NIH says more than 86 percent of participants come from communities long overlooked in health research, including racial and ethnic minority groups, rural residents, people with disabilities and people facing socioeconomic barriers. Many large genomic data sets lean heavily toward people of European ancestry, which makes it uncertain whether some genetic findings and risk-prediction tools hold up elsewhere.
Drugs and genes
Pharmacogenomics, the study of how genetic variation changes a person’s response to medication, is one of the likeliest uses. Larger and more varied data could clarify variants tied to altered drug metabolism, weaker treatment effects or higher toxicity. The data could also support research on medication-related adverse events, treatment adherence, prescribing patterns and health disparities.
Pharmacy Times was blunt about the limits. The expanded data set does not immediately change medication-selection recommendations. Findings still need validation and prospective testing before they enter pharmacy practice.
The money problem
All of Us has been funded through annual appropriations and money authorized under the 21st Century Cures Act. The NIH said the cuts have hit enrollment, data collection and the development of a pediatric cohort.
