During a recent visit to UAB, Leadership Alabama participants took part in a hands-on precision medicine case simulation led by members of the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute.
Matt Might, Ph.D., director of the Hugh Kaul Precision Medicine Institute, spoke to the group before participants took part in a structured case exercise designed to simulate rare disease investigation and precision medicine decision-making.
In his presentation, Might shared his personal journey into precision medicine, including how his experience as a rare disease parent shaped his work and how artificial intelligence is helping scale precision medicine across multiple areas of patient care and research.
Participants were then divided into small groups and worked through a real rare disease case for which PMI had provided research insights and therapeutic considerations. The exercise followed a guided, step-by-step format, giving participants an inside look at how PMI evaluates genetic findings, functional data, and potential therapeutic leads, with AI assisting the analysis in real time.
The session was designed to give Leadership Alabama members a look at what it is like to work through a case, interpret genomic and functional data, and understand how research-driven insights can help inform therapeutic possibilities.
After the group exercise, participants reconvened to discuss their approaches and compare reasoning. The discussion highlighted how different perspectives can shape decision-making, even when working from the same clinical and research information.