In an interview at the Future of Genomic Medicine conference in La Jolla, California this week, Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), said that in President Barack Obama's $215 million 'precision medicine' program, one of the earliest tasks will be to find a way to assemble data from a mishmash of existing studies.

According to him, the program will gather loads of health information and genetic data on more than 1 million Americans in order to develop targeted medicines.

Volunteers who have expressed interest in participating include Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic and the US Department of Veterans Affairs.

However, before picking partners, it is important to work out how to take medical records from various health systems and make them function together.

Collins said, "That's a high priority early on. That doesn't necessarily mean all of the data is in one place being operated by the same software. But the software has to be transparent, and the data must be exquisite. That's not easy".

Collins led a large study of US citizens in 2004 as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute when he successfully led an international team to sequence the first human genome.

Although his proposal failed, a significant drop in the cost of genomic sequencing and the adoption of electronic medical records is now making it possible.

According to Collins, the goal of the project is to understand the drivers of human disease and develop medicines that are dedicated to an individual's genetic makeup. He is interested in putting patients in charge of deciding how their data will be used.

Collins has designated NIH Deputy Director Kathy Hudson and Yale geneticist Dr. Richard Lifton to lead a panel to carry out the initiative.

The next seven months will be spent by the panel to study various proposals. Collins hopes that by September or October, there will be a clear path on how to start it off.