Genetics and pharmacogenomics took center stage at the Personalized Medicine World Conference in Mountain View, CA.
A larger part of the discussion was centered around how we will collect, handle, standardize, store and process all the information on each of us for healthcare.
Attendees were an interesting mix of angel investors, academics, representatives from governmental agencies, institutional investors, pharma, information technologists, bioethicists, hospitals, patients and consultants. Currently, the field of personalized medicine is a mix of all these players, looking for the next healthcare technology play.
Large IT companies that wouldn’t normally be thought of as healthcare attended, IBM and Dell both gave talks. A major focus for the IT companies were EHR‘s or Electronic Health Records. As the types of data multiplies, a way to handle digitized X-rays, test results, prescriptions and clinician notes will need to be found and integrated. For a savvy technologist who can understand what kinds of information clinicians/doctors need at a glance, there is a definite business opportunity.
One point of note, Dr. Amos from NIST stated governmental agencies have a vested interest in making sure biological test results have standards- so your results from one lab will be able to be interpreted by any doctor down the line. Coming up with these standards will likely be a long process involving both government, healthcare workers and industry.
Contributed by Chia Hwu, follow me on Twitter @chiah.
