By Ayoub Aouad | JAN 4, 2018
MICROSOFT AND GOOGLE PUSH HEALTHCARE STRATEGY WITH NEW INVESTMENT: Microsoft and Google participated in a $58 million funding round for DNAnexus, a precision medicine start-up. DNAnexus, which provides a cloud-based platform for biomedical informatics and data management, will use the funding to advance its precision medicine solutions and expand its footprint in genomic data management for clinical trials.
Precision medicine is a new model of care that is growing in popularity.Traditionally, physicians have used treatment plans that have been designed with the average patient in mind. However, as the healthcare industry moves to more data-driven solutions, physicians are able to provide care with increasing levels of customization. Precision medicine makes use of variations in genes, environment, and lifestyle to guide the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases for each patient. As this model becomes more popular, firms will flock to develop the tools needed to extract, store, share, and analyze genomic data, which will help facilitate market growth — the global precision medicine market is expected to grow at compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12% to reach $88.6 billion by 2022, up from $38.9 billion in 2015, according to Market Research Future.
Microsoft and Google are aggressively going after the precision medicine market as part of their healthcare strategies. The tech giants have both developed new solutions, invested in start-ups, and entered strategic partnerships within precision medicine. For example, Microsoft launched a machine learning project that sifts through medical papers and data to help doctors find the right drug regimen for cancer patients and Google has introduced its own cloud computing service to help process and analyze the world’s genomic information.
