Committee backs goal of 1 million for US 'precision medicine' project

The National Institutes of Health on Thursday approved a blueprint for U.S. President Barack Obama's Precision Medicine Initiative and named an NIH insider as interim director of the project, which aims to enroll 1 million volunteers in the next three to four years. The sweeping study, announced in January by Obama, will gather data on people in the United States of all ages, racial and socioeconomic groups. NIH Director Francis Collins said he would "act immediately" on recommendations delivered to him on Thursday by a working group created to develop a framework for the study.