Press Release

Gillibrand: Congress Set to Give Final Approval For $100,000 To Create Innovative E-Health Data Bank In New York City

Dec 10, 2009

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand announced today that Congress is set to give final approval for $100,000 to the Academy for Medical Development and Collaboration (AMDeC) Foundation to build an e-health infrastructure database aimed to combat diseases and improve health care treatment options for New York City’s underserved minority communities. Senator Gillibrand aggressively lobbied members of the Appropriations Committee to include funding for the project in this year’s spending bill.

“We can’t afford to wait any longer to improve quality health care for New Yorkers. This federal investment will help AMDeC advance medical breakthroughs and eliminate health disparities in communities throughout New York City,” Senator Gillibrand said.

AMDeC, an organization which works with world-renowned scientists, collaborates with 28 medical research institutions throughout New York State in an effort to treat diseases and improve health care treatment options.

Federal funding will help launch InTraGen, a project designed to build a unique e-health database. The 12,000 samples taken from a diverse racial and ethnic pool will target disease origins at the molecular level and will allow doctors in underserved minority areas to tailor to their patients’ clinical care.

Aimed to lay the groundwork for medical breakthroughs, New York research labs partnering with this project include Columbia University, Cornell University – Ithaca, Rockefeller University, Memorial Sloan Kettering, University of Buffalo, Rochester University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, SUNY Upstate, and North Shore – Long Island Jewish (LIJ) Health System.

The House and Senate have each passed their version of the appropriations bill, and today Senator Gillibrand announced that the funding was included in the final, combined version.