As we grow ExitEvent’s coverage beyond tech entrepreneurship, a natural progression is healthcare. And it’s not just because the Triangle is so strong in life science. It’s also because emerging industries like the Internet of Things and processes like machine learning are bringing tech and healthcare together in ways never witnessed before. And legislation like the Affordable Care Act is requiring health systems modernize, mostly by better incorporating technology in their day-to-day practices.
With all that in mind, I paid extra attention to a panel at the CED Life Science Conference earlier this month dedicated to
Personalized Medicine—This trend has been coming since the human genome was first decoded in 1990. But in recent years, as the cost of sequencing a genome has dropped to around $1,000 and companies like Human Longevity Inc. have formed to analyze all the data from those genomes, personalized medicine seems to be a closer reality.
A Personalized Medicine Coalition has formed to lobby to Congress for funding for continued research and commercialization. Its research shows the number of treatments or diagnostics on the market at 113 in 2014, up from 13 in 2006. President Obama has proposed for $215 million in the 2016 federal budget to establish a research group within the National Institutes of Health and fund other efforts by the National Cancer Institute and FDA to more effectively target treatment to individuals.
