The trigger for the widespread and systematic deployment of personalised healthcare was pulled last month with the announcement by the US company Life Technologies of a desktop machine that can sequence an individual’s genome at a price of $1,000.
This has long been seen as the price point at which genome sequencing could start to become a regular part of healthcare, alongside measuring blood pressure and heart rate, and unlocking the door to personalised medicine.
There’s a lot still to do to shift from the old paradigm of medical practice to the new, believes Robert Wells, Head of Biotechnology Unit at the Science and Technology Policy Division of the OECD, but the field is advancing in a number of different ways. Over the past 15 years or so, “It’s gone from if to when, and how to now,” Wells told the Science|Business conference ‘Personalised Healthcare: from Theory to Practice’ held in London last month.
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