Precision medicine has become a focal point of medical news in recent years. In theory, it promises a future of individualized medicine, but what does it look like in practice? In this talk, Maaz Imam presents the All of Us Research Program, which is building a dataset to help transform the future of health research by equipping researchers with expansive health data from diverse populations, especially those underrepresented in biomedical research. The All of Us Research Program’s centralized, secure, cloud-based platform allows researchers across a wide range of settings and institutions and at all stages of their careers (e.g., students, early-stage investigators) to execute rapid, hypothesis-driven research with just a computer and an Internet connection. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is registered for the highest level of access at the controlled tier, and Imam suggests its potential to fuel research at Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED).
Maaz Imam, MsPH, is an MD candidate at CI MED. He joined the Stanford HEART Lab while earning his master’s degree from The University of Chicago, where he concentrated on clinical research, data science, and entrepreneurship. While in graduate school, he also consulted for Princeton Engineering on technology transfer, became a registered researcher for the NIH's All of Us Research Program, and collaborated with researchers at the University of Chicago on the global IRONMAN initiative. Prior to medical school, he worked in healthcare venture capital, emphasizing health equity through impact investment. He currently serves on the board of AxisMED. His research interests span atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, chronic disease prevention, risk factors, social determinants of health, and technology-based medicine.
Register to join lunch in person with colleagues at MSB Lecture Hall (Room 274).