Realizing the full potential of Our Future Health through data linkage and trans-biobank efforts
Biobanks, entities that systematically collect, store and manage biological specimens, are reshaping medical research and global health by enabling unprecedented scale and depth1. In this Comment, we discuss how Our Future Health represents a major new biobank resource and consider how it can realize its full potential in advancing population-scale genomic research. We first highlight how its broad coverage of the UK adult population can counter past biases and set a new norm of multi-ancestry cohort studies. We then consider how it is uniquely positioned to catalyze data linkage and trans-biobank research, thereby complementing census or other regularly collected data to deepen our understanding of complex traits, including parent-of-origin effects. Finally, we consider how it can inform related international efforts, and end with highlighting key research priorities for Our Future Health to continue to shape the global genomics landscape.
By Vincent J. Straub, Stefania Benonisdottir, Augustine Kong and Melinda C. Mills