In my job as a corporate futurist and change management consultant, I spent a good deal of time reading about emerging and future technology trends. Some days it is obvious that certain trends are absolutely undeniable. Yesterday was one of those days.
I began my day by reading an article noting that genetic researchers had identified more than 10 new genetic links to prostate cancer. More significantly, two of these markers can now be included in a new diagostic test.
I have written before about the promise and perils of genetic testing but, at the time, I noted that the cost of individualized was currently $350,000 – a price tag that greatly limits their wide-spread effectiveness.
It would be foolish, however, for professionals in either the health care or life sciences industry to think that this price tag will stay constant. In fact, yesterday it was reported that Illinuma may have sequenced the genome of an individual for $100,000. And a second article claimed that Pacific Biosciences hopes to sequence an individual’s entire genome in a matter of minutes for less than $1,000 within the next few years.
This is amazing because just a few years ago, it cost Craig Venter $70 million to sequence his entire genome. This lower price point should give the health care and pharmaceutical industries a 1000 reasons to begin rethinking their businesses—now.
For starters, I know that companies such as Roche have moved aggressively into this field by purchasing companies like 454 Life Sciences. What this suggests is that as genetic sequencing equipment continues to drop in price and ever more people begin gathering genetic information, these people will require a great deal of assistance in understanding and managing these results.
The flood of genetic information will also place an ever greater shift on preventative care. In turn, customers won’t just demand help in dealing with existing conditions they will want assistance in preventing disease from occurring in the first place. The pharmaceutical industry will need to adjust accordingly.
The industry will also need to ”unlearn” its reliance on big blockbuster drugs. It will still be some time before the “era of personalized medicine” arrives, but patients will be getting increasingly sophisticated at understanding how they will react to certain drugs. The one-size-fits-all era in the pharmaceutical will quickly go the way of the one-color (black) Model T Ford went in the automobile industry.
And as patients become more sophisticated, you can bet that lawyers and regulators will also become more sophisticated in managing, exploiting and governing how all of this genetic information can be handled.
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Jack Uldrich is a writer, futurist, public speaker and host of jumpthecurve.net. He is the author of seven books, including Jump the Curve and The Next Big Thing is Really Small: How Nanotechnology Will Change the Future of Your Business. He is also a frequent speaker on future technology and future trends, nanotechnology, innovation, change management and executive leadership to a variety of businesses, industries and non-profit organizations and trade associations.
