AHA, Amazon collaborate on precision medicine initiative

The American Heart Association (AHA) and Amazon Web Services (AWS) formed a partnership to use cloud technology to discover advanced in cardiovascular science and medicine.

The collaboration, which was announced July 7, is part of the AHA’s Institute for Cardiovascular Medicine. The AHA will invest $30 million in the next five years to launch the institute, which will focus on researching precision medicine. The organization is seeking an additional $100 million to $200 million in a fundraising campaign for the institute.

“The promise of precision cardiovascular medicine and care can be realized when research and technology come together to deliver new insights,” AHA CEO Nancy Brown said in a news release. “The AHA and AWS collaboration will unite the global research community to accelerate discovery in cardiovascular health and usher in a new era of tailored prevention and treatment that will help patients and lessen the global burden of cardiovascular disease.”

The AHA also announced it will award 14 grants during a 12-month period, in which the AHA will provide funding for research expenses and salaries while AWS will provide recipients with access to its services such as computational storage and analyses.

“AWS is uniquely positioned to provide scalable, cost-efficient solutions for the scientific community, while delivering the industry-shaping technology and high-performance computing necessary to facilitate the most demanding research projects,” Teresa Carlson, vice president of AWS’s worldwide public sector, said in a news release. “We’re honored to be the AHA’s collaborator on this incredibly important endeavor to improve cardiovascular health worldwide.” 

Tim Casey,

Executive Editor

Tim Casey joined TriMed Media Group in 2015 as Executive Editor. For the previous four years, he worked as an editor and writer for HMP Communications, primarily focused on covering managed care issues and reporting from medical and health care conferences. He was also a staff reporter at the Sacramento Bee for more than four years covering professional, college and high school sports. He earned his undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Notre Dame and his MBA degree from Georgetown University.

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