Most of us have had the experience of buying a new cellphone. Sometimes a new carrier offers more features for less money. Maybe your current phone lacks the storage needed to support new apps that help and intrigue you. Your needs evolve. Technology changes as well.
All of Us is in a similar situation. Thanks to participants and all that you have shared with us, the program continues to grow. What we need to support our growth continues to change. As a program, we have been asking ourselves some questions:
- Where can we improve to make your experience better?
- What information do you want to receive as a participant?
- How can we continue to protect your information?
- How can we best support the program’s work as we grow?
- What can we do to be more efficient and cost-effective?
- What are the things that work best that we should keep?
- Can our 13,000-plus researchers answer all the questions they’re asking with the tools we give them?
- What new data do we need to collect to support important discoveries?
Since we launched the program in 2018, we have grown and learned a lot. We have experience we can use to think through these questions and guide our plans. We are excited about the future of All of Us. We hope you are, too.
A Big Technology Change
In the next few months, you will hear more about an important change. We are changing the program’s technology platform. This is the system that helps participants sign up, complete activities in their accounts, and receive messages from All of Us. It’s how your local partner reaches out to you and supports you on your All of Us journey.
Our technology platform is the hub for All of Us activity. Changing it means changing a lot of other parts of our program.
What You Can Expect
Let’s go back to the cellphone analogy. Imagine you switch phones. Maybe you go from Android to iPhone, or vice versa. It will probably look and feel a bit different. The way you complete certain tasks will be different. But in general, you know how the new phone works and get the hang of it quickly. There are probably some improvements and benefits that you can’t see at first that will make the experience better for you.
That’s what we hope will happen with this technology change.
Because we have so much information and so many activities, we are making this technology change in stages. Picture the challenge of downloading your photos from one phone and moving them to a new one. We securely store information shared by more than 840,000 participants. It’s a lot of data. We protect it with the same care and respect that you show your treasured images.
During the first stage in December and into early 2025, you may notice that some features you currently see won’t be there at first. For example:
- We won’t have a mobile app when we launch our new system.
- Pediatric accounts (for families who enrolled at select pilot locations) will not be available until the spring.
- Certain research activities, like Exploring the Mind, will be added back later in 2025.
These are important parts of our program. They are important for powering research, and we plan to add them back in over time.
What Will Be Better in the Future
Once finished, the new platform will enable even more exciting research. Here are just a few of the things this new system will allow us to do in the future:
- Add new research activities more quickly, including ones that may focus on a particular health topic that matters to you.
- Allow you to participate in the way you want to. Would you rather have us send you a paper survey? Do you want us to contact you more or less?
- Offer new ways for participants to receive information about themselves, including information about their DNA.
Important Dates
Here are a few dates to keep in mind as we prepare to change our platform.
- If you have a genetic ancestry and trait result in your account, be sure to download a copy before Friday, November 22.
- If you have a health-related DNA result, be sure to view it before Friday, November 22. If you view it, a copy will be available for you on the new system through 2025.
- Our technology system will be down from December 2 to 8. During that time, you will not be able to log in to your account.
- Starting December 9, you can log back in to your account. When you log in for the first time, we’ll ask you to create a new password.
Change can be a challenge. This technology change is an investment in the future of All of Us. It will be complex, but over time, we promise, it will be worth it.
All of Us is all about big investments to achieve exciting goals. We’re on a mission to improve health research together. So whether you’re using a cellphone, tablet, or computer, we hope you’ll use it to stay in touch. We’ve got big plans for the future.
