There is an interesting section in the latest Economist on Healthcare and IT. The synopsis starts as follows.. "The convergence of biology and engineering is turning health care into an information industry..." It covers some of the ideas that we have discussed in class-including personalized medicine and health 2.0. It is of interest to not only the two groups that focused on the transformation of healthcare but also those developing their memos to the CEOs in the healthcare sector.
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This article makes an interesting statement about genomics, claiming that it has been oversold to the rich community even though the benefits are considered marginal at this point. Whether or not genomic analysis is beneficial is disputable (however there is significant evidence supporting its value), the costs are such that only the rich and well-insured can afford it. A significant portion of this cost is the amount of time it takes to perform the seqeuencing end-to-end. Focusing on just the IT aspects of the seqencing, the raw data from a sequencer is on the order of hundreds of gigabytes so it can take hours to get the data off the sequencers via a network connection. Morever, many centers are sequencing at such a high capacity that there is frequently a shortage of disk space. Even after the raw data is successfully captured, it takes powerful computers using the latest and most efficient algorithms, up to 48 hours to analyze the raw data and generate the sequence. I'm writing my memo to the CEO of Applied Biosystems (ABI), a manufacturer of genome sequencing equipment and part of my recommendations will address these issues. Of course, the bandwidth law and Moore's law tell us that we'll get better at crunching the data but how can ABI poise itself now to either speed along this process or position itself more favorably than its competitors once the technology arrives. I'm investigating possible partnerships and bundling strategies.
ReplyDeletelooking forward to seeing what ABI may do in this space...
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