Health & Saf. Code, § 130300

The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:

(a) Over the past three decades, the United States has been a leader in biological research and medicine that describes fundamental biological structures and processes in unprecedented detail and that has led to breakthroughs in therapies and treatments. Advances in information technology and computing have also furthered our ability to gather important data to better understand disease functions. However, we are now at a point where our capacity to collect information has outpaced our capacity to integrate and analyze it and to convert data to new knowledge.

(b) According to a 2011 report from the National Academy of Sciences, entitled “Toward Precision Medicine: Building a Knowledge Network for Biomedical Research and a New Taxonomy of Disease,” the aggregation, integration, and analysis of data from research, clinical, personal, and population health settings are critical to creating a new knowledge network that will enable us to deliver more precise medicine, whether by targeting existing therapies more safely and effectively to patients, or by developing new therapies based on new insights into disease. Precision medicine, which embodies efforts to create this new knowledge network through data infrastructure, technology tools, and diagnostics, holds promise to transform health, health care, and biomedical research.

(c) Precision medicine, particularly in the form of better diagnostic tools for infectious disease, has the potential to alleviate the burdens of pandemics through early detection, faster response, and better countermeasures.

(d) California, with its vast scientific, medical, and technological resources, is positioned to lead advances in the field of precision medicine, which is gaining both national and international prominence. By establishing a California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine, the state can help coordinate public, private, and nonprofit partners to advance this important intersection between science, research, and medicine, and to foster the creation of new technologies and therapies that can improve the health of Californians. A California Initiative to Advance Precision Medicine will bring together state precision medicine leaders as well as complete projects that demonstrate the power and application of precision medicine to the people of the State of California.