Just finished to read a paper on an interview of the medicine Nobel Laureate Barry Marshall on what lies ahead in the genome area.

In a nutshell Barry notes that as the decoding of the genome is getting faster and cheaper (a rough sketch is possible today in a day at a cost of 200 US$) all people will have their own genome decoded. It is something that can easily stay in a flash pen, just 2 GB, and for that matter it can stay in a cell phone. And this is what Barry foresee by the end of this decade. Now that would make my cell phone really mine!

The reason Barry voices to have the genome in the cell phone (in spite of privacy issues) is that such data will be used in a variety of applications since we are heading towards personalized, proactive medicine.

Understanding who you are at the DNA level will mean to be able to foresee potential health problems and take measure in advance. Once you are hit by a disease knowing your genome will make it possible to deliver specific drugs, at the right time for maximum effect.

You can go as far as saying that apps will be developed to let you understand yourself (but also the mixing of your DNA with the one of your prospective partner) and what better device than a cell phone can you think of to store those data and run those apps?

This may well open up a window of opportunities for Telecom Operators that may be able to preserve the information in a “personal cloud space” and provide limited access to third parties that want to deliver service to me.

So far the decoding of the human genome has not led to dramatic changes in medicine and cure but we have just begun. It would be like saying in 1810 that, “yes, this guy, Alessandro Volta, has shown some interesting -spectacular- things with that thing he calls electricity but it has not produced any impact on out life….”. It took hundred years to begin to appreciate impacts of the electricity in daily life. Since the evolution pace is faster than ever we my need to wait not 100 years but may be just 20….

 

Tags: cell phone, Genome, privacy

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 14th, 2011 at 5:54 pm and is filed under From Atoms to Bits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.