We could all of us, right now, understand what’s in our genome. For some of us, it could be lifesaving.
Precision medicine covers everything from smart watches to liquid biopsies, but genomics is the tip of the spear. Near-term applications are already here: diagnosis of rare conditions, some limited pre-conception carrier screening and embryo selection for hopeful parents, and various uses in cancer diagnosis and treatment. But I am most excited about the next phase of potential for genetic testing: newborn and childhood sequencing, expanded carrier screening for expecting parents, polygenic risk scores, new pharmacogenomics applications, and population screening for all age groups.