Precision Child Health: From Technology to Translation

The field of precision medicine is benefitting from several exciting advances across the entire patient journey from diagnosis to clinical care. The increasing rapidity and throughput of DNA sequencing can accelerate genetic diagnoses for a growing range of diseases. Furthermore, diverse type of omics profiling — including epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics — are providing unprecedented opportunities for subtyping disease and for identifying causes and mechanisms of disease. Understanding the molecular causes of disease opens new opportunities for precision therapies — including emerging nucleic acid therapeutics and genome editing strategies — not just for common diseases but also for tailored treatment of patients with rare diseases. Beyond these scientific advances, technological progress in artificial intelligence (AI) and devices for real-time health monitoring are newly emerging to assist clinical care and decision-making. This conference will bring together experts from across these various fields of precision medicine to discuss the latest progress, including its application in diverse pediatric settings to benefit child health. The conference aims to showcase the interconnected nature of the field of pediatric precision medicine, by showing how distinct subfields complement each other, how optimal clinical care requires an integrated understanding of the whole child from their genetics to their wider environmental circumstances, and how fundamental laboratory-based discoveries can transform clinical care, which in turn can feed back to motivate new research directions.