Google sticks its servers behind genomics alliance Google is throwing its considerable weight, and cloud servers, behind a global genomics alliance with the aim of advancing medical research for future generations. The Chocolate Factory announced today that it is joining the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, which it describes as an “international effort to develop …
In the future Google won't spy on you - they'll spy on the clone they made of you, which is plugged into a large VR simulator, stacked in towers of pods, tended by tentacled robots under a stormy sunless sky....
I *knew* the human battery thing was a cover story! The Matrix was a sentient marketing machine! Wake up sheeple!
For investigating a suspicion of an inheritable disease, genome mapping can be a suitable screening tool. But most bodily diseases are caused by environmental factors: infectious agents, unhealthy diets, smoking and alcohol, injuries. In these cases standard diagnostic tools are better suited. Simply ask questions and look at the patient - and ho! There is preciously little help in genome mapping for predicting drug idiosyncrasies. When necessary, simple targeted screening will do the job more quickly, and without the privacy concerns associated with big data. Measuring drug concentrations will take care of variations caused by day-to-day variations or drug interactions. For this, miniaturized point-of-care equipment seems much more attractive than the big data monstrosity. Lots have happened on miniaturized measuring equipment, and Google pretends that it did not happen.
Targeting screen testing could prove to be far more expensive through. Some of those tests right now are selling for hundreds of pounds each, when whole genome testing costs are rapidly decreasing to just a thousand pounds and will become even cheaper in years to come.
Once you map a whole person genome and can understand all portions of that genome querying which drugs is more suitable to your condition is just as simple as entering a search query, or more likely a doctor entering your condition and the computer coming up with the best drug for you base on your genetics, I suppose eventually it may even be able to design specifically for your biology. You could even do simulations on how that genome will react to environmental conditions, if you have enough data and knowledge, which could shock some people into changing their lives.
Google is well inform about future measuring equipment, given that own Motorola whom have developed some impressive sensor technologies itself, and project tango shows that Google is working on getting new sensor measuring technology out into the world. They also own android, which Google clearly intends to become the standard operating system for such devices.
>Targeting screen testing could prove to be far more expensive through.
Really? A patient is going to have fluorouracil for a cancer. Targeted screening will be for defects in dihydropyridine dehydrogenase
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dihydropyrimidine_dehydrogenase_deficiency
Like full genome sequencing these tests are also becoming less expensive. In a nonprofit hospital it is cheap.
>Once you map a whole person genome and can understand all portions of that genome querying which drugs is more suitable to your condition is just as simple as entering a search query
You choose antibiotics or anti-HIV medications based on the patient's genome? Or analgesics? You don't.
>You could even do simulations on how that genome will react to environmental conditions
Yes, indeed. So Google will know the contents of all your foodstuffs and all the other environmenta factors that will influence your drug metabolism and drug response and will reliably predict the kinetics to an accuracy that will make actual clinical monitoring superfluous - based on the genotyping of your receptors and signal systems and enzymes and constitution. Genomic mapping cannot replace clinical follow-up. Can Google predict renal failure from dehydration or bleeding or infection based on genetics? Even Google cannot do that.
>project tango shows that Google is working on getting new sensor measuring technology out into the world
Yes, indeed.
"can actually build a visual map of rooms using 3D scanning. The company believes the combination of these sensors with advanced computer vision techniques will open up new avenues for indoor navigation and immersive gaming, among many other things."
Not relevant at all.
With Google's resources nothing is impossible. But amateurs very quickly lose their way - and those who listen to the full genome maping hype, have already lost it.
Note the Google-guy's (current?) wife, who runs the rather interesting and neatly-UI'd DNA testing website named above. Which the US's 'FDA' has lately forbidden to publish new, if soft, health information. The FDA should get their waggons in a circle, as Google is darkening the hilltops with Tribes from all over, and arrows may begin to fly.
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