The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said June 30 it has the world’s largest integrated health database in the world.
The database contains data from a program called All of Us, described as “a historic effort to collect and study data from one million or more people living in the United States.”
The NIH said Wednesday that it has obtained data from more than 747,000 participants in the years since Congress created the program in a 2016 law, up more than 114,000 since the last update. The agency makes the data available to researchers.
The new update also includes more than 535,000 whole genome sequences, linked to nearly 482,000 electronic health records, as well as 600,000 physical measurements and 747,000 survey responses.
“There’s a paradox at the heart of precision medicine,” NIH Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “To tailor treatments to individuals, you actually need very large populations to uncover the patterns that connect genetics, lifestyle, and the environment to health outcomes. That is exactly what All of Us provides: research at unprecedented scale.”
Dr. Josh Denny, CEO of the program, said, “All of Us reflects the trust of people across the country who chose to contribute to research to benefit everyone. This release puts a richer dataset into the hands of scientists working on real clinical problems. This is how we advance the health of all Americans.”
A key aspect of the database is the diversity of its participants, officials said. Nearly half of participants are minorities. About a quarter are 70 years of age or older, with another 21 percent being younger than 40. All 50 states are represented by participants.
Other large databases do not contain such breadth. The UK Biobank, for instance, contains records for half a million people. Of that group, 95 percent are white, and 86 percent live in urban areas.
All of Us data is available to researchers at no cost.
“I see All of Us as a national treasure,” Bhattacharya said. “This is an accessible, foundational platform that investigators at every career stage in institutions across the country can use to tackle our most pressing health challenges.”
Researchers have already utilized the data for more than 1,400 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including identifying medications that may help prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
One of the most recent studies, published in the Journal of Pain in the fall of 2025, found that people who were more active had lower risk of neck, lower back, and hip pain in the future.
