President Barack Obama has unveiled a new medical initiative that seeks to collect and store genetic data from millions of individuals. With all the data, scientists will be able to create cures and medicine tailored to specific genetics.

On Friday's announcement, Obama said the possibilities are endless with this new biomedical research initiative that White House officials are calling the precision medicine initiative.

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Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institute of Health, says one of these possibilities is to help doctors find out what specific treatment best works for a specific patient.

Apart from that though, it also seeks to unite the many different biobanks - laboratories that have been collecting genetic data since 1990 - and to link the different information they hold to complete our knowledge of the many different gene variants.

It an impassioned statement, Obama also said that the project can help in overcoming the "accidents and circumstances of birth."

"If we're born with a particular disease, or a particular genetic makeup that makes us more vulnerable to something, that's not our destiny, that's not our fate," Obama said. "We can remake it. That's who we are as Americans, and that's the power of scientific discovery."

A project that has the potential to affect so many lives is not free though. In fact, it would need to begin with a down payment of $215 million in the president's budget request for the fiscal year, which begins on October 1.

On breaking down the budget needed, White House officials said that $130 million would go to the consortium that would collect information from everywhere like records and lab results.

In addition, $70 million is for the National Cancer Institute to investigate on certain genes that develop certain types of cancer.

Finally, $10 million goes to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates the technology used to analyse the DNA, and $5 million to protect the privacy of the records.

While it does cost a lot, Obama pointed to the work that was done on genetics 25 years ago. He said that for every one dollar that was allotted for the genetics project years ago, $140 have been earned back.

TagsPresident Barack Obama, Genetics, Precision Medicine Initiative