February 26, 2016 - Veterans and VA’s Million Veteran Program were featured as part of the discussion at the White House’s Precision Medicine Initiative Summit on Thursday. In January 2015, President Obama launched the initiative with the bold goal of accelerating biomedical discovery and to give clinicians new tools, knowledge and therapies to tailor treatments to individuals.As a part of the initiative, VA launched the Million Veteran Program (MVP) to learn how genes affect an individual’s health. The research program aims to improve the health of our Veterans by linking genetic, clinical, lifestyle and military-exposure information, by learning more about the role of genes in health and disease. To date, more than 450,000 Veterans, including the secretary himself, have voluntarily donated blood samples to what is becoming one of the largest genetic databases.
“Our Precision Medicine Initiative has been designed to get all these various building blocks brought together so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” President Obama said. “So that, for example, the VA — which has been gathering genomic data on a large number of our men and women who have served this country in order to serve them better within the VA system — can make them connect with researchers at a particular university who are focused on a particular disease, and can we use big data to accelerate the research process much more rapidly.” read more>>>
VA is literally revolutionizing prosthetic care for our Veterans and the rest of the world.
Feb 24th, 2016 - Two veterans are participating in an important 10-year trial that involves "retraining" veterans on how to walk on embedded percutaneous osseointegrated prostheses, or POP implant.Prior to the POP implant, the veterans had been using traditional sleeve device attachments to connect their prosthetic limbs to their remaining leg after undergoing above the knee amputation.
"We're excited to see the progress these veterans are making in this VA funded research study," says Dr. Larry Meyer, chief of research at the VA Salt Lake City Health Care System. "These first steps are amazing for the patients and our team. This is a long-term study that will (eventually) cover 10 veterans over a multiple years and, if successful, hope to be expanded to a larger number of patients. Research can take many years to complete. As researchers, we are anxious to gather our results and allow future improvements. The exciting thing about research is that we don't know the answer when we start."
Doctors say the implants should reduce the amount of energy the men exert when doing activities. read more>>>
Hook Up, Stand Up! Over the next couple of weeks we will take you on two Veteran amputee’s journey, from being injured, to their struggles with traditional prosthetic legs, to their new osseointergrated implants. Introducing the new percutaneous osseointegrated prosthesis, or POP. Bryant Jacobs and Ed Salau are the first in the nation to receive them thanks to an FDA approved feasibility study here in SLC. Both men now have a titanium stud embedded in their femur with an external docking mechanism to which the prosthetic attaches. They can once again feel the ground they walk on. What you are about to watch is really cool, and could change things for Veteran amputees everywhere in the future. #percutaneousosseointegration #Veteran #VASLC
Posted by VA Salt Lake City Health Care System on Wednesday, February 24, 2016
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