Don't know if anyone had heard about the Kaiser Permanente Biobank?

Since Kaiser has millions of lives cared for in a statewide healthcare system, they could easily pound out 500k bio samples overnight.

For the past year or so I have been thinking that the big problem with environmental studies is the need for huge sample size per environment size.

These guys popped up on my radar back in January.
When the AMA News covered there new shiny "biobank"......

" Kaiser Permanente is constructing what is expected to be one of the world's largest and most diverse repositories of genetic, environmental and health data.

The Kaiser repository already has 40,000 DNA samples from members of its giant California-based health plan and expects to have 500,000 samples by 2012."

Well, it turns out that they already have 100k now. Why wouldn't they? They actively care for over 3 million of California's citizens......And with the Government going under, I am certain Kaiser will take care of EVEN MORE.......

In my email inbox an update on this machine.......

The Kaiser Permanente Research Program on Genes, Environment, and Health (RPGEH) and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) have been awarded $24.8 million over two years by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to create a new resource for studying disease, health, and aging.

With this support, Kaiser Permanente’s RPGEH and UCSF will conduct a genome-wide analysis of DNA samples from 100,000 Kaiser Permanente members from Northern California who have volunteered to join the RPGEH. This new and detailed genetic information – which has never before been generated on such a large and diverse population – will be linked to decades of historical clinical and other health-related information on these participants, taken from health surveys and the Kaiser Permanente electronic health record, the world's largest civilian electronic health record.

This will likely serve as a prototype for which Francis will follow........Why?

Think about it. Lots of national/EPA data on environment, now linked to clinical data and genotypes.

Boy, the government could get a whole crapload of that data if they would just open up the VA EMR for free to all physicians........

Any company looking to get into the EMR business these days is going to fail unless they can give it away for free....

That being said, Kaiser has a huge head start on anyone else looking to do this. Why? 3.3 million medical records paired with DNA......

But, this still could be a boondoggle unless they have much more specific environmental data. "Linking environment to disease ain't like dusting crops boy........"

If you want to learn why, you can start here

In fact, the more I learn about the field, the more madness I discover.....This will be a huge boondoggle unless done very, very carefully. The old adage of collect the right data may actually be something of a moving target as the study continues. Which may make this type of exercise particularly suited for the internet age.....

The Sherpa Says: Yeah, Biobanks are all the rage......but how well does one know how to keep thine own? Ask Coriell, they have been doing it a very, very long time....