Value of Liberal Arts education in the Era of Precision Medicine

Abstract

The Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) aims to treat and prevent disease by accounting for individual variability in genes, environment, and lifestyle for each person. The initiative announced by President Obama aims to build the PMI Cohort Program that will compile a national research cohort of one million or more U.S. participants. Through technical advances in research capability for high throughput screening of genes/gene products, data sharing technology and informed consent policies that empowers patients, the PMI will usher in a new era of medicine in which researchers, providers and patients work together to develop individualized care. Paramount to successful delivery of this initiative will require trust and participation of the public and scientists being able to share data and protect the rights of the public. It is our contention that liberal arts colleges can fully participate in PMI by: 1. Taking advantage of open source and cloud platforms to access and analyze data obtained from both basic and clinical sciences; and 2. Providing an intellectually diverse student body to survey opinions and knowledge of modern genomic technologies in order to identify areas of public distrust and issues with informed consent arising from the implementation of these technologies. Furthermore, the curriculum at liberal arts colleges will enable deep discussion and exploration of moral, ethical, legal and scientific aspects of large scale initiatives such as PMI.