California Healthcare Institute Applauds Governor Brown on Budget Agreement
La Jolla, CA (PRWEB) June 16, 2014 -- Yesterday, the California Legislature successfully passed California’s $108 billion budget for the coming fiscal year, moving swiftly to approve the fiscal year general fund spending plan before the midnight deadline. The budget starting July 1 pays down debt while allocating some of the surplus to programs benefiting lower-income Californians and to supporting biomedical innovation and research. The legislation, SB 852, passed 55-24 in the Assembly and 25-11 in the Senate.
The $108 billion budget includes $3 million for precision medicine research, a relatively new area of biomedical research that targets an individual’s molecular biology to better understand and combat disease. Advances in precision medicine, including tools to facilitate the analysis of large and complex datasets, will help provide better understanding about the causes of different diseases, determine who is most at risk, and guide the development of technologies to prevent, diagnose, treat and cure conditions at the individual patient level.
California Healthcare Institute (CHI) applauds and supports Governor Jerry Brown and his Administration for their unwavering support of biomedical innovation, as demonstrated again in this year’s budget. CHI is the statewide nonprofit, public policy research and advocacy organization, representing leading California academic and research institutions and biotechnology, medical device, diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies.
“We thank Governor Brown for his strong commitment to biomedical research and innovation in California,” said CHI President and CEO, Todd Gillenwater. “California is the birthplace of biotechnology and today the state’s biomedical industry employs nearly 270,000 people working to develop innovative new medicines, technologies and therapies needed to treat and cure patients.”
“We look forward to working with the Governor to best invest these research dollars to better understand and combat disease in the 21st century,” said Gillenwater. “Many CHI member companies, universities and research institutes are already working in the precision medicine space and we applaud Governor Brown for his thoughtful and visionary support to advance this important research here in California.”
About CHI-California Healthcare Institute
CHI represents more than 275 leading biotechnology, medical device, diagnostics and pharmaceutical companies, and public and private academic biomedical research organizations. CHI’s mission is to advance responsible public policies that foster medical innovation and promote scientific discovery. CHI’s website is http://www.chi.org. Follow us on Twitter @calhealthcare, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.
Erica Hiar, California Healthcare Institute, http://www.chi.org, +1 (858) 456-8885, [email protected]
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