Mining of EHR data for meaningful phenotypes will likely continue to be an important feature of genomic research. The coming formation of the US national Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program (PMI-CP), whose strategy was outlined in September 2015,69 calls for a population of more than 1 million individuals that will share their healthcare data. This publicly available resource will be available to diverse researchers. It is anticipated the majority of the individuals for the PMI-CP will be derived from healthcare provider organizations, which will share longitudinal EHR data periodically to form the bulk of phenotype data to enable both discovery and implementation approaches described here. Near-term priority scientific opportunities recognized in the PMI-CP report69 included analysis of drug-response traits and phenome-wide methods to accelerate drug discovery, both of which are uniquely accelerated through EHR research. The PMI-CP, in combination with other worldwide resources, anticipate an exciting future with huge populations able to be densely studied for many diseases.
