The US government has released additional details about President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, including the specifics about where the money would be spent. The plan, which has yet to be approved by Congress, calls for the creation of unique medical treatments based on the genes of the patient. The idea of ‘one treatment fits all’ can no longer be considered accurate. What the Precision Medicine Initiative seeks to do is to use the genetic makeup of a patient to tailor care for diseases such as cancer and cystic fibrosis.

Already, biotechnical companies are developing drugs to treat patients with specific genetic mutations. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved several of these drugs. In the future, the President hopes doctors will have access to a patient’s entire genome. While this may have sounded ludicrous only five years ago, it is now a feasible goal. The costs of mapping a person genome have plummeted over the past several years, from millions of dollars to little more than $1000.

What could stand in the way of such a cutting-edge and potentially lifesaving plan? Getting Congress to approve of the president’s request for $215 million.

The majority of that money, $130 million, will go to the National Institute of Health (NIH) to further develop their database of the medical histories of millions of willing Americans. The money would also be used to gather other data, such as genetic profiles, to help researchers better understand the underlying causes of many diseases.

The second largest recipient would be the National Cancer Institute (NCI), which would receive $70 million. This money would allow the NCI to expand its research into to the biological factors that cause cancer and to continue to develop treatments for cancer patients.

The remainder of the money would be split between the FDA and the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. The $10 million for the FDA would help it enlarge its operations and speed up the rate at which it evaluates and approves new medicines and treatments. The last $5 million would be used to build an online infrastructure that would allow patients to share their medical data without the risk of it being revealed or stolen.

Although it is a hefty amount of cash to ask for upfront, the money will help to greatly reduce health care costs over the long term.