Back in 1995 Reed Hastings began planning his new business. He wanted to send movies through the mail. At the time, movies were only rented in large, bulky VHS cassettes and his business model wasn’t feasible. Hastings had an advantage over his competitors, he understood that by the late 1990’s exponential advances in data storage would allow movies to be produced in a small, lightweight DVDs and that he would soon be able to execute on his plan to send movies through the mail.
Life science, healthcare and life insurance companies must adopt the same type of thinking in regard to exponential advances in genomics. Today, it is quite expensive to sequence a person’s genome (approximately $60,000). By 2013, however, the price is likely to be less than $1000 and when that happens a whole host of new products and services are going to be possible. The time to start preparing for this future is now.
Interested in reading related articles on genomics by America’s leading healthcare futurist, Jack Uldrich? Check out these past posts:
Personalized Medicine’s Accelerating Future
The Future is About to Get Personal
You’ll Look and Feel Good in Genes
A Trillion Reasons to Care about Genomics
The Coming Health Care Revolution
