Do you believe in the phrase, “a Match Made in Heaven”? Well if you don’t, you might begin to believe in it, once you have a look at the relationship between the science of Precision Medicine and the technologies like AI, Big Data and Blockchain in the IT sector. They are helping each other grow, and providing tons of opportunities and challenges for innovation.
As more and more emphasis is placed on the Omics technologies such as Genomics, Proteomics, Metabolomics, and Transcriptomics a continuous upward trend has been witnessed in the amount and rate of the healthcare data being collected. The dream of making precision medicine a part of routine clinical care is impossible without the support of current IT technologies. Also, in order to sustain in the precision medicine market, these IT companies would need to develop technologies which can eventually collect, store and analyze the health care data for seven billion people which in itself is both a challenge and an opportunity for them. Further, the focus on the creation of Electronic Health Records (EHRs) for the different population sets is adding to the challenge.
According to a study by Stanford University, the amount of Healthcare data generated in 2013 was 153 exabytes (153 Billion Gigabytes) and this is expected to increase to 2314 exabytes in 2020. All this data is of no use in its raw form and requires meaningful analysis to be of any clinically useful.
The IT companies not only need to ensure the collection, storage and analysis of the huge amount of data, but also, they need to make sure that the data is interoperable and easily compatible with the Clinical Decision and Support Systems(CDSS) and multiple software that are already being used by hospitals. Only when, the CDSS is well-established and is in-coherence with the working of hospitals, we will really be able to move toward the evidence-based interventions that will be therapeutic as well as preventive.
The field of Precision Medicine makes use of so many technologies that, all the major players of have realized, that the only way to be successful is to collaborate and share the expertise in their respective fields. The field also works toward the revolutionary goal of making precision medicine a routine in healthcare.
IBM Watson and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs have decided to extend their collaboration and continue to apply IBM’s AI technology to genomic data and provide state-of-art cancer treatment.
Recently, National Institute of Health(NIH) has launched STRIDES (Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability), an initiative to allow Biomed researchers have "access to the most advanced, cost-effective computational infrastructure, tools and services available" and, the first company to sign up to provide these services is Google Cloud. According to their statement, NIH will be seeking to add more such industry partners.
Also, 2bPrecise has partnered with PierianDx, a genomics database start-up, to focus on the creation of CDS systems that will take genomic data into account and provide real-time clinical information directly at the point of care.
In other instance, Shivom, a start-up that is trying to maintain the genomic data ownership by using the blockchain technology has created what it calls the ‘Unique Global Genome ID’, which will make genomic data interoperable and easy to use by the clinicians.
The complexity of the market for Precision Medicine is probably incomparable with any other technology market. Thousands of private companies, government organizations, educational institutes, research institutes, and hospitals have together invested trillions of dollars in this field. Moreover, hundreds of new developments are coming out of the R&D centers of these organizations located in every major country of the world, every day.
Having closely followed all the major trends and developments in this industry for more than three years, our analysts have conducted a Business Intelligence and Strategy (BIS) Research on the Precision Medicine market and other technological advancements associated with it. Also, we have assisted our clients with customized research, where we have focused on providing insightful and incisive information based on their specific requirements.
Reach out to us, if you think our custom market research competence could offer you accurate insights, better understanding and help you to craft out a perfect growth strategy.
This is the second article in this Precision Medicine series. Stay tuned for the next article in the series.