Next generation sequencing in healthcare

Abstract

The year 2013 was an eventful year witnessing revolutionary discoveries in the world of extraordinary medical advances and healthcare technology. We saw a spate of new and promising discoveries ranging from detecting lung cancer with a cough, pancreatic cancer with accurate faster, cheaper paper diagnostics, to the possibility of using the Human Immunodeficiency Virus to treat genetic disorders in children (Radcliffe, 2013). Emerging newer technologies have fuelled the momentum of the ‘genomic revolution’. The completion of sequencing of the human genome project in 2003 (National Human Genome Research Institute, 2010), translated into the rise of the ‘omics’ era creating mega scientific data. It also gave rise to a breed of genomic companies that focused on application of the emerging technologies, particularly in medical science.