Genomics & the Cloud: What’s Next?
Saving patient data to the cloud can mean using big data to improve medicine and discover problems that doctors might have missed. Uploading an entire gene sequence and studying the sequence – a branch of molecular biology known as genomics – could have an even bigger impact on medicine as a whole in the coming years. Let’s look at the good and bad of the future of genomics and the cloud.

Personalized Gene Editing
One of the biggest advancements in recent years is CRISPR, a method of editing genes that has made editing individual genes much easier and cheaper than in the past. It can be used to fight world hunger by making plants produce more fruit or become more resistant to anything from weather, insects, or blight, and even edit a person’s genes. It’s not quite at the stage where it’s ready for humans, but it’s close.
Now, combine an easy way to edit genes with big data. First, the patient’s gene sequence is uploaded to the cloud. This lets a computer comb through and identify what could be changed with CRISPR, to either reduce the chance for disease or eliminate it entirely could be in our near future. It seems like something out of a sci-fi movie, but it could very soon be a reality. Using big data to essentially crowdsource the solution to medical problems is not new, however.


ScienceLogic
Liquidware
