Sunday Times article10 Nov 2019 20:23
Major article in todays Sunday Times about Illumina and the future of genetic testing.
A few extracts
“In the future, an individual’s genome is going to be an essential part of their health record,” said deSouza, 48, a former Microsoft executive who has led Illumina since 2016.
It is hard to overstate the potential of genetic technology, both economically and medically. Blurring the lines between computing and medicine, it is the type of technology that swathes of the economy could be built around.
In future, deSouza predicts Illumina’s technology will mean that babies can be tested for rare diseases in the womb through a simple blood test of the mother. Parents of children with rare genetic diseases could cut the wait time for a diagnoses from seven years to days.
These are innovations that will save healthcare systems billions of pounds. In America, almost 10% of families with a child with a rare genetic illness go bankrupt because of the medical costs of waiting for a diagnosis, said deSouza.
Despite Illumina’s size, and market dominance, deSouza said the world was still just at the beginning of the genomics revolution. His optimism is echoed across the UK, where companies are springing up seeking to use, and improve, on Illumina’s work.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/business/the-ones-that-got-away-ddq32s3rj