Month: July 2012

Apple returns to green standard

Posted on by Ben Debski

Being seen to be green is something that many firms are eager to adhere to, with the positive PR making them appear less like giant, uncaring corporations and more conscientious about the world the operate in. However, signing up to strict industry standards can prove troublesome when a company wants to launch a new product.

When Apple helped to launch the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) registry in 2006, it was praised for pioneering a greener attitude from tech companies. The registry was designed to allow consumers to evaluate the effect products have on the environment, helping those with greater concerns to buy greener electronic devices.

Apple, however, fell foul of the system last week, and incurred a significant PR blow. Announcing that they were leaving the standard, thought to be as a result of the design of their new line of Macbook Pro laptops, the California-based firm claimed that they were still leading the way in other areas of environmental design.

However, when local government officials in San Francisco announced they were banning government agencies from purchasing Apple products as a result of the withdrawal, the company came in for a great deal of criticism.

Now, Apple has performed a dramatic u-turn, publishing a letter on their website from Bob Mansfield, its senior vice president of hardware engineering. He says: “We’ve recently heard from many loyal Apple customers who were disappointed to learn that we had removed our products from the EPEAT rating system. I recognize that this was a mistake. Starting today, all eligible Apple products are back on EPEAT.”

The decision is a blow to Apple’s credibility when it comes to green policies, as it sends out the message that the company is more concerned with how it is perceived by its customers than any genuine concern for committing to environmentally friendly rules.

However, the head of EPEAT, Robert Frisbee, welcomed their return: “We look forward to Apple’s strong and creative thoughts on ongoing standards development.”

Cataloguing food bacteria

Posted on by Ben Debski

Tracking the cause of food related illnesses can be difficult, with foods containing huge amounts of different bacteria. However, researchers at a US university hope they will soon be able to identify the origin of most of the disease.

An extensive new database at the University of California is being set up to help collate the genetic code of hundreds of thousands of bacteria found in food.

The data will allow scientists to trace the bacteria to the specific food it was carried in, as well as the country it originated in. As many as 100,000 different genetic codes of bacteria are expected to be collected, a significantly higher number than the 1,000 identified so far. In Salmonella there are thought to be as many as 2,700 different types of gene code.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) described the plans as “a big deal form a scientific standpoint”. Dr Steven Musser said that the current database at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention only carries partial gene maps, which is not enough information to trace the origin of the bacteria. The new database, which will be publicly available, will greatly improve that.

Food-based diseases strike down as many as 30 percent of developed countries populations every year, with approximately 76 million cases in the US annually. However, it is in developing countries where the impact is felt worst. Although hard to estimate the global figure for food-related illnesses, it is thought that in the year 2000 as many as 2.1 million people died from diseases carried in food.

Identifying Alzheimer’s early

Posted on by Ben Debski

Researchers have discovered a series of signs of Alzheimer’s that can be identified up to 25 years before symptoms occur.

The research, by a group of US scientists at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, shows five key indicators in spinal fluid and brain scans that could help us understand better how the disease develops and what types of people are more susceptible to it.

The degenerative disease, which causes severe memory loss and dementia typically after the age of 65, has no known cure. Recent figures show around 27 million sufferers of the disease worldwide.

The new study, which saw 128 patients from families considered a high risk of the disease, is an important breakthrough, as it will enable scientists to trial drugs on sufferers earlier in the diseases onset.

Dr Randall Bateman, professor of Neurology at the university and the author of the study said: “A series of changes begins in the brain decades before the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease are noticed by patients or families, and this cascade of events may provide a timeline for symptomatic onset.

“As we learn more about the origins of Alzheimer’s to plan preventive treatments, this Alzheimer’s timeline will be invaluable for successful drug trials.”

The Alzheimer’s Society welcomed the news, with Professor Clive Ballard adding: “This important research highlights that key changes in the brain, linked to the inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease, happen decades before symptoms show, which may have major implications for diagnosis and treatment in the future.

“There are also good indications that these findings could apply to people with non-hereditary Alzheimer’s disease, but we can’t yet be sure. Further research into this complex condition is needed to confirm a definite link.”

Europe looks for smarter cities

Posted on by Ben Debski

Creating technologically advanced, smarter cities is something that many rapidly growing emerging countries are pushing ahead with. However, with populous cities throughout Europe that have grown over the course of centuries, it is harder to integrate new transport, energy and environmental systems without causing major disruption.

The European Commission wants to change this, and has set up the Smart Cities and Communities European Innovation Partnership (SCC) to help finance projects that will help address the problems of pollution, congestion and energy efficient buildings.

The idea is that research will be brought together to help develop projects that will demonstrate to cities how they can improve their infrastructure. Currently, many cities and businesses are reluctant to invest in innovative projects that may cut costs in the long-run, but would require significant initial investment. To help speed things along, EU funds of €365m have been set aside for the initiative in 2013, a massive increase from the €81m for this year.

Gunther Oettinger, the EU’s Energy Commissioner, said: “Innovation drives Europe’s competitiveness and is the best means of addressing energy efficiency. Thanks to this partnership, high efficiency heating and cooling systems, smart metering, real-time energy management, or zero-energy buildings, neighbourhood solutions will spread among more and more European cities.”

Transport Commissioner Siim Kallas added: “Transport is the lifeblood of every city for people and business. But Europe’s cities suffer most from road accidents, congestion, poor air quality and noise. We need to drive forwards the research and innovation that can bring us to our goals of CO2 free cities, phasing out conventionally fuelled cars from city centres, to smart charging of electric vehicles and smokeless silent buses.”

The need to restructure many cities’ infrastructure is important, with pollution and congestion creating inefficient and costly places for people to live. However, persuading governments to invest in this innovation will be hard, particularly at a time of such financial difficulty and short-term politics.

Medicine ensures safe sector

Posted on by Ben Debski

There have been many recent, truly remarkable developments in global healthcare. Rather than stonewalling responsibility for the poorest regions in the world, leading companies are embracing the opportunity for serving low-income populations with specialised products, new distribution models and affordable pricing. In short, they have found new ways to serve 90 percent of the world’s population that may have been previously overlooked.

Healthcare as an industry is seen as an economic growth engine for developing nations with domestic as well as export income benefits. The evolution of emerging markets has created new challenges and opportunities for companies, and they’ve made significant strides into particular regions such as Brazil, China and India. By introducing new products into these nations, these companies are often establishing deeper ties including the acquisition of domestic healthcare manufactures, API (active pharmaceutical ingredients) sourcing; construction of manufacturing plants and research facilities; partnerships with governments and domestic producers and assertive product positioning with healthcare professionals, players and patients.

“These healthcare companies exemplify the principles of shared value creation,” said Mark Kramer, co-founder and MD of FSG. “They are re-conceiving products and markets, re-inventing their value chain, and strengthening local healthcare clusters in ways that contribute both to the profitability of the business and the welfare of society.”

For example, one of the UK leaders in diagnostic solutions, Roche, is piloting a new breast cancer screening process in Thailand and GE are working on low-cost, portable medical devices such as a handheld ultrasound machine that can be used in remote rural communities and transmit pictures to clinics for diagnosis and study.

Merck has developed tiered pricing models to drive sales volumes for its drugs in emerging markets and GlaxoSmithKline also sells millions of products annually through a similar system, and a newly designed low-cost sales force and risk-sharing arrangement.

Supported by advanced clinical and technological resources as more and more companies become active participants in shaping efficient and effective healthcare systems, governments with ownership stakes in domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers are able to expedite policy decisions and decide more treatment options. Coupled with their formal healthcare benefit plans, they are able to create new and efficient services for the patient population. This cyclical progression is beginning to share efficient and effective healthcare systems in developing nations.

For example, Swiss-based Novartis hired hundreds of people to provide health education to remote Indian villages, addressing previous medical constraints that affected people living in that area, in order to distribute drugs there, and in recent months, Eli Lilly & Co announced a $30m initiative to educate healthcare providers and patients about non-communicable diseases, working with governments to improve conditions for chronic disease care in four-emerging markets. In May, the company opened a new diabetes-focused research and development centre in Shanghai, China showcasing its significant and sustainable commitment to Asia.

Sustainable systems
To be competitive, healthcare companies need to quickly identify when “emerging market” nations mature into ‘intermediate’ or ‘established’ markets, adjust their business models accordingly and re-position their brands to keep pace with evolving demands and maintain their lead in the global marketplace. Many emerging markets have already entered a new phase of existence and are no longer open field-running opportunities of revenue for companies headquartered outside their borders. They are quickly maturing due to governments and healthcare communities becoming directly involved with cost, outcome assessments and more establishment of care and payer structures; an increasing number of people with greater access to care, a more fortified relationship between domestic and foreign healthcare; more permanent industrialisation and modernisation; and greater access to advanced biological and IT technology. This evolution has created new business environments with opportunities for healthcare companies and global brand management.

About one third of the population of Brazil has health insurance; 75 percent is through commercial operators or companies with self-managed plans. Despite Brazil’s Minister for Health and Aging administering a national health policy where healthcare can be obtained through private and government institutions, decentralisation of healthcare is widening, with more of it overseen by individual states. The government strongly supports the manufacturing and use of generic drugs within the nation’s healthcare system, and 15,000 pharmacies participate in “Pharmacia Popular” and “Health Has No Price” state programmes which distribute products at minimal or no cost to patients.

China has a three-tiered distribution system to treat the 20 percent of the world’s population who live in the country, with over half of all private healthcare paid for by the people themselves. The system has become increasingly united via enhanced information systems from healthcare companies, who offer improved logistics and reporting. There are 3,000+ drug companies with complete product development, manufacturing and distribution capabilities for domestic needs as well as global export. A very large portion of the market is in hospitals and hospital-based pharmacies with a rapidly growing retail pharmacy segment.

The remarkable growth of the private health sector in India has come at a time when public spending on health care at 0.9 percent GDP is among the lowest in the world. However, while the upper and middle classes have access to a high level of care, one third of the nation is rural and significantly impoverished by comparison, and only has access to substandard care. Employers pay for nine percent of spending on private care, health insurance five to ten percent, and 82 percent is from personal funds. As a result, more than 40 percent of all patients admitted to hospital have to borrow money or sell assets to cover expenses, and 25 percent of farmers are driven below the poverty line by the costs of their medical care.

The market transition of healthcare companies is indicating quite significant development in emerging markets and growing economies. According to a recent report from Healthcare Medical Pharmaceutical Directory, the widening adoption of contemporary healthcare methods, with increased access to technology including new procedures, has allowed for significant medical progression. The introduction and expansion of a permanent healthcare provider presence beyond metropolitan zones and into rural areas has been extensive due to increased funding. There are now higher levels of clinician expertise, with a greater ability to manage more challenging patient healthcare issues, and the establishment of domestic healthcare industries that include product development and manufacturing, as well as producing quantities to export, has allowed for an increased flow of funds that can be re-invested into  nations.

As markets shift and the globe’s economies find themselves stimulating new and diverse ways of utilising resources, healthcare industries have found themselves well positioned to re-imagine their outlook. With that in mind, The New Economy has spent the past few months analysing the best firms in the field, thanks to reader feedback, and here announces the magazine’s 2012 Healthcare awards. Congratulations to all of our winners.

Connecting to the future

Posted on by Ben Debski

One of my favourite photographs shows a Hindu sadhu right out of central casting – naked body, long matted hair and beard, ash-smeared forehead, rudraksha-mala around his neck, the works – chatting away on a mobile phone. The contrast says so much about the land of paradoxes that is today’s India – a country that, as I wrote years ago, manages to live in several centuries at the same time. There is something particularly special about the sadhu and his mobile phone, because it is in communications that India’s transformation in recent years has been most dramatic.

When I left India in 1975 to go to the US for graduate studies, there were perhaps 600m Indians and just two million landline telephones. Having a telephone was a rare privilege: if you were not an important government official, a doctor, or a journalist, you might languish on a long waiting list and never receive a phone. Members of parliament had among their privileges the right to allocate 15 telephone connections to whomever they deemed worthy.

Moreover, a phone, if you had one, was not necessarily a blessing. I spent my high school years in Calcutta, and I remember that if you picked up your phone, there was not even a guarantee that you would get a dial tone; if you got a dial tone and dialled a number, there was no guarantee that you would reach the number you sought, and you usually heard an exasperated “wrong number!” more often than a friendly “hello.”

If you wanted to call another city, say, Delhi, you had to book a “trunk call,” and then sit by the telephone all day waiting for it to come through. Or you could pay eight times the going rate for a “lightning call” – but even lightning struck slowly in India in those days, so a lightning call took a half-hour instead of the usual three or four (or more) to be connected.

As late as 1984, when an MP rose to protest the frequent telephone breakdowns and the generally woeful performance by a public-sector monopoly, the then communications minister replied in a lordly manner. In a developing country, he declared, telephones are a luxury, not a right; the government had no obligation to provide better service; and any Indian who was not satisfied with his telephone service could return his phone since there was an eight-year waiting list for telephones.

Sign of the times
Now fast-forward to today. In the first edition of my book The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone, I reported that, in April 2007, India set a new world record by selling seven million mobile phones that month, more telephone connections than any country had ever established in one month. By the time the book was printed, bound, and distributed to bookstores, that figure was already out of date. And in 2010, India sold 20m mobile phones three months in a row.

India has now overtaken the US as the world’s second-largest telephone market, with 857m SIM cards in circulation and an estimated 600m individual users. China has more, but India is ahead in phones per capita, is adding them faster, and is projected to overtake China before the end of 2012.

I am not merely celebrating a triumph for India’s capitalists. What is wonderful about the “mobile miracle” (I am not embarrassed to call it that) is that it has accomplished something that our socialist policies proclaimed but did little to achieve – it empowered the less fortunate. The beneficiaries are not just the affluent, but people who in the old days would not have dreamed even of joining the dreaded waiting lists.

It is a source of constant delight to me to find mobile phones in the hands of the unlikeliest of my fellow citizens: taxi drivers, paan wallahs (betel vendors), farmers, and fishermen. If one visits a friend in a Delhi suburb, one will notice on the side streets an istri wallah with a wooden cart that looks like it was designed in the sixteenth century, using a coal-fired steam iron that looks like it was invented in the eighteenth century, to press clothes from the neighbourhood. These days, however, he has a twenty-first-century instrument in his pocket; incoming calls in India are free under most calling plans, so it costs him nothing to find out where his services are needed.

Recently, I visited the country farm of a friend in Kerala. He asked if I wanted fresh coconut water; I said yes, and he pulled out his mobile and dialled the local toddy tapper.

A voice replied “I’m here;” we looked up, and there he was, on top of the nearest coconut tree, with his lungi tied up at his knees, a large hatchet in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.

Fishermen take phones out to sea to call the market towns on the coast on the way back to shore to see where they can get the best prices for their catch. Farmers used to have to send an able-bodied relative – perhaps a ten year-old boy – on a gruelling walk to town in the hot sun to find out whether the market was open, whether their harvest could be sold, and, if so, at what price. Now they save a half-day’s time with a two-minute call.

The mobile phone has empowered the Indian underclass in ways that 45 years of talk about socialism singularly failed to do. In the new India, communications has become the great leveller.

Shashi Tharoor is a member of India’s parliament, was Indian Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 2009-2010, and served as the UN Under-Secretary-General from 2001-2007

(c) Project Syndicate 1996-2012

Sino-American relations

Posted on by Ben Debski

China and the US are in the grip of major structural changes that both dread will end the Halcyon era when China produced low-cost goods and the US bought them. In particular, many fear that if these changes lead to direct competition between the two countries, only one side can win.

That fear is understandable, but the premise is mistaken. Both sides can and should gain from forging a new relationship that reflects evolving structural realities: China’s growth and size relative to the US; rapid technological change, which automates processes and displaces jobs; and the evolution of global supply chains, driven by developing countries’ rising incomes. But first they must acknowledge that the old pattern of mutually beneficial interdependence really has run its course, and that a new model is needed.

The old model served both sides well for three decades. China’s growth was driven by labour-intensive exports made more competitive by transfers of technology and knowledge from the US and other western countries. This, coupled with massive Chinese public and private investment (enabled by high – and recently excessive – savings), underpinned rising incomes for millions of Chinese.

The US consumer, meanwhile, benefited greatly from declining relative prices of manufactured goods in the tradable side of the economy. Accordingly, US employment shifted to higher-value-added activities, in turn supporting higher incomes in America, too.

Multinational companies operated increasingly efficient and complex global supply chains, which could be reconfigured as the shifting pattern of comparative advantage dictated. Global supply chains ran largely from east to west, reflecting the composition and location of demand in the tradable part of the global economy.

But all of this is starting to change. The benefits are now shifting from cost to growth. Supply chains are now running in both directions, and are being combined in novel ways. Chinese demand is not only growing, but, as incomes start to rise, its composition is shifting to more sophisticated goods and services.

Shifting sands
Thus, China’s role is changing: once the west’s low-cost supplier, it is now becoming a major customer for western products. This represents a major opportunity for advanced economies to rebalance their growth and employment, provided that they are positioned to compete for the appropriate parts of evolving supply chains.

Rising Chinese incomes also imply a structural change for China, as continued growth presupposes a shift to higher-value activities. Technology and knowledge will still be hugely important, but China must begin generating new technologies, in addition to absorbing established western tools and skills.

In order to meet the challenges of structural change, the goal for US policy should be to expand the scope of its tradable sector, with a focus on employment. Reorienting US policy toward external demand across a broader array of sectors, in turn, requires attention to two critical areas: education and investment.

High-quality education and more effective skills development are crucial to generating new employment opportunities for the middle class, while investment can rectify America’s disconnection – particularly that of its medium-size businesses – from global supply chains. The trading companies and infrastructure that smaller, more open economies have created in order to connect to global markets are underdeveloped in the US.

To be sure, success in these areas will not come overnight. But nor is the status quo a permanent condition; it can be improved with investment and supportive policy.

Moreover, the US would benefit in the short term from relatively simple measures, such as removing barriers to inward foreign direct investment, particularly from China.

On the Chinese side, policy prescriptions are not the issue. The importance of evolving a different growth pattern is already understood, and has been enshrined in China’s 12th Five-Year Plan. Its successful implementation will require strengthening incentives to innovate, deepening the exisiting technology base, investing more in human capital, developing the financial sector, and applying competition policy equally to domestic, foreign, and state-owned enterprises.

Given the requirements on both sides, how to ensure a productive and mutually beneficial relationship between the US and China is a relatively straightforward matter. China still needs access to advanced-country markets and technology, but the emphasis is shifting to homegrown knowledge, skills, and innovation. The US, still an innovation powerhouse, can help, but requires access to the growing Chinese market and a level playing field once there. The same is true of financial-sector development.

In the US, a determined effort to restore fiscal balance and establish a sustainable growth pattern – that is, one not based on excessive domestic consumption – is crucial to long-term economic health. Such rebalancing implies sustained reduction of the current-account deficit by expanding exports, rather than merely curtailing imports. Chinese demand will help, all the more so as its economy grows in size and sophistication. So expanding linkages with China now is an investment in the future with a rising return, rather than a quick fix.

A lower US current-account deficit will also benefit China, whose $3.2trn in foreign-exchange reserves – held mostly in dollar-denominated assets – is becoming a large and risky investment. Progress towards external balance in the US would allow a slow reduction in China’s reserves, alleviating its asset-management headache.

A deeper understanding of each other’s shifting structural challenges would facilitate both sides’ ability to identify areas of mutually beneficial cooperation. But the core of the relationship is simple: China needs US innovation to grow, and the US needs Chinese markets to grow. If both countries are to benefit from such symbiosis, there is no alternative to collaboration, substantial investment, and reforms on both sides of the Pacific.

Michael Spence is a Nobel laureate in economics and currently chairman of the Commission on Growth and Development. He is also Professor of Economics at NYU’s Stern School of Business

(c) Project Syndicate 1996-2012

Magical markets

Posted on by Ben Debski

Americans are great believers in the value of entrepreneurs and small business. That faith underlies the JOBS (Jumpstart Our Business Startups) Act, a new law that will make it easier for small companies to raise money and bypass the regulatory “friction” that firms encounter when they go public. The law assumes that people who can’t find jobs may be able to find investors instead, and that small companies will be able to get the financing they need to grow bigger and hire more people. Angel investors, friends, and family will boldly go where banks may fear to tread.

The JOBS Act is an extreme example of Americans’ belief in people’s essential goodness, and everyone’s right to self-fulfilment. Every entrepreneur should be entitled to raise funding from willing investors. It is a uniquely American approach, and capitalistic in the best sense of the word, for it encourages (and democratises) investment, rather than fuelling consumption.

Small (under $1bn) companies can raise money directly from small investors in a formalisation of the “crowdfunding” approach, whereby a project’s principals post their plans on a web site and ask for money, essentially opening up the initial public offering (IPO) market. The theory underlying the law is that a new set of accredited third-party marketplaces, rather than the overburdened Securities and Exchange Commission (which missed Bernie Madoff’s monster ponzi scheme), will ensure that entrepreneurs tell the truth, and that investors know what they are buying. (Of course, that begs the question of how thoroughly vetted and reliable those third-party marketplaces and their vetting systems will be.)

While this initiative was born in the US, many countries are wondering how to jumpstart their own entrepreneurial sectors, and may be tempted to follow America’s lead. So why do I hope that they resist that temptation? Unfortunately, the JOBS Act is as likely to be successful as the US government’s earlier attempts to ensure that American families could buy their own homes. Low down payments, deferred interest, and other enticements made it attractive for people to buy their own homes (or to speculate with second homes) whether they could afford to or not.

Mortgage brokers were happy to get in on the act. Some were driven by an honest mission to expand property ownership; others were driven by greed. Some knew that the people to whom they were selling houses could not afford it; others simply did not want to know. Some played by the rules; others forged documents. The banks that originated mortgage loans sold their portfolios to investors who didn’t really understand what they were buying.

In the same way, the JOBS Act will ease life for some deserving people – and most likely attract many more who are less deserving. The new system will attract scam artists and promoters who will encourage unsuitable companies to seek investment and oversell the companies to individuals who can’t afford to lose the money that they invest.

Safety nets
I wish I had more faith in the system, but the problem is not a lack of good people, good investors, or good entrepreneurs. The problem is that, without regulation, bad people take advantage of the good ones. While regulation and restrictions may hamper small business, not all regulation and restrictions are useless.

Yes, there are some wonderful, honest companies that deserve investment and can’t get it, but they are not that common. I see a lot of startups. Many are appealling and have good ideas, yet most of them fail. Now the quality of even the honest startups is likely to decline as more of them are established, and they will spend more of other people’s money before failing.

For example, with more startups, it will be even harder for each of them to find management, talent, and the right employees. Indeed, many people whom an entrepreneur might have hired will probably become CEOs of competing startups. Meanwhile, all of them will be competing for a finite number of customers, and those companies that make progress will then have to compete for even scarcer scale-up capital from investors.

Many investors in these startups are likely to lose their money. Even under the current system, many angel investors lose money. The best route to success in angel investing is to invest in, say, ten or more separate companies, so that you have the chance of at least one big winner. But, again, a broader investor pool is likely to reduce the average number of investments per investor, with inadequate diversification leading to many more losers than winners.

The faith that drives the JOBS Act is the same magical thinking that drives many internet phenomena: people are good and everyone means well. But the internet’s easy accessibility and low-entry barriers have led to spam and malware and bad behaviour; each new service starts out “clean,” but then ends up requiring its own regulations.

Just ask eBay, Google, or Facebook how much they spend on security, fraud detection, and the like. They don’t want to tell you, which says a lot. As on the internet, so in real life: sometimes friction has a purpose.

Esther Dyson is CEO of EDventure Holdings and an active investor in a variety of startups around the world. Her business interests include IT, healthcare and space travel

(c) Project Syndicate 1996-2012

Healthcare Awards 2012

Posted on by Ben Debski

Best Medical Research & Development Company, Europe
ImmuPharma

Best Medical Research & Development Company, Americas
Alexion Pharmaceuticals

Best Medical Research & Development Company, Asia
Takeda

Best Medical Research & Development Company, Africa & Middle East
Adcock Ingram

Best Medical Research & Development Company, Australasia
GlaxoSmithKline Australia

 

 

Best Healthcare Provider, Europe
Helios Healthcare

Best Healthcare Provider, Americas
WellPoint

Best Healthcare Provider, Asia
Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital

Best Healthcare Provider, Africa & Middle East
Health Matrix

Best Healthcare Provider, Australasia
Healthcare Australia

 

 

Best Pharmaceutical Firm, Europe
Abbott Deutschland

Best Pharmaceutical Firm, Americas
CFR Pharmaceuticals

Best Pharmaceutical Firm, Asia
Takeda

Best Pharmaceutical Firm, Africa & Middle East
Novartis

Best Pharmaceutical Firm, Australasia
Johnson & Johnson

 

 

Best Healthcare IT Company, Europe
m.e.d. eHealthcy

Best Healthcare IT Company, Americas
NextGen

Best Healthcare IT Company, Asia
Accenture

Best Healthcare IT Company, Africa & Middle East
Siemens Medical Solutions

Best Healthcare IT Company, Australasia
Australian Health Care Technology Ltd

 

 

Best Medical Tourism Provider, Europe
AIMIS

Best Medical Tourism Provider, Americas
Blossom Bariatrics

Best Medical Tourism Provider, Asia
Fortis Healthcare

Best Medical Tourism Provider, Africa & Middle East
Andalusia Group of Medical Services

Best Medical Tourism Provider, Australasia
Global Health Travel

“Socialites” get hacked off with lack of prosecution

Posted on by Ben Debski

The world is full of hackers, or so it seems. Barely a day goes by without news of a fresh security breach. With so much personal information being uploaded to social databases like Facebook, Twitter, and Google +, a hacking on a personal page is almost, if not akin to a burglary. Except the threat is not a physical one, it’s some enigmatic malevolent marauder who has trespassed in someone’s personal cyber-space, rather than a living room.

In early June, social networking website LinkedIn said some of its members’ accounts were “compromised” after reports that more than six million passwords had been leaked. Hackers posted a file containing users encrypted passwords onto a Russian web forum, making them invalid, forcing people to change their details. The news came as LinkedIn was further forced to update its mobile app after a privacy flaw was uncovered by security researchers.

Facebook continues to remain a main target for hacking and phishing, but even its own engineers are getting involved in the act. When the social media giant went public on NASDAQ and CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the opening bell, his Facebook page automatically posted a status update: “Mark Zuckerburg listed a company on NASDAQ.” The engineers had used Facebook’s Open Graph API to essentially turn the bell into an integrated application. While the hack was a bit of a publicity stunt, it indicates that it’s very possible to create physical pieces of hardware that trigger Facebook updates, which is slightly unsettling.

With all of today’s technology and complicated code, coupled with all the so-called ‘experts’ who are meant to prevent hackers from getting in, why does it keep happening? Since social media is a fairly new concept, there are going to be weaknesses in the software and infuriatingly, hackers will always try to exploit these. In the past, a hacker would have spent many hours guessing username and password combinations, but now they have access to software, thanks to the clever programmers who built these tools for them. Once they latch onto a server that does not kick them off after five incorrect guesses, the software can guess billions of username and password combinations, and they don’t even need a list of passwords.

As the sophistication of computer hackers developed, they began to come onto the radar of law enforcement. During the 1980s and 1990s, the US and UK passed computer misuse legislation, giving them the means to prosecute. A series of clampdowns followed, culminating in 1990 with Operation Sundevil – a series of raids on hackers with bombastic names like the Legion of Doom, the Masters of Deception and Neon Knights. However, hackers remain undeterred: a current favoured practice is to infiltrate social media accounts by sending out messages filled with spam, containing viruses within links.

The sudden growth in the number of hackers is not necessarily down to schools improving their computing classes or an increased diligence and much flexing of programming prowess on the part of young, IT enthusiasts – more often than not, it is the result of Attack Tool Kits (ATKs) – widely available software designed to exploit website security holes.

Keeping the front door, back door and windows locked by maintaining convoluted passwords and changing them regularly, installing a beefy firewall, and running regular virus checks to ensure nothing unsavoury has been uploaded are normally the most efficient ways to deter hackers. Yet, if they are determined to, they will find a way to get in.

The new map of Silicon Valley

Posted on by Ben Debski

Not many people were paying much attention to Instagram a year ago. The photo-sharing app was something teenagers used to take vintage-looking pictures of themselves and share via social media. But when Facebook bought the startup for a $1bn, no one was thinking of trendy teens any more. And the deal has reignited interest in numerous internet-based startups.

Two years ago a couple of San Francisco software designers managed to raise $500,000 in seed money and launched the program on Apple’s App Store. The simple software applies vintage photographic filters to pictures captured by the smartphone’s own camera, and allows users to share them on multiple social networking sites, including their own. The product came out in October 2010, without a marketing budget at all. By December the app had a million users.

The meteoric rise of Instagram is a lesson to internet-based startups everywhere. And it has whetted investors’ appetites for these companies. But as well as being potentially very profitable, many of these companies are looking for more then just cash. They are looking to revolutionise the way we interact on the internet, like Facebook and Twitter before them.

Silicon Valley is buzzing once again like the good old days of tech startups and exciting opportunities. The industry is flooded with internet-based companies competing for the attention of investors. Despite Facebook’s lacklustre debut on the trading floor, interest in these businesses has not waned and investors are sniffing around for the next big thing. But in the Valley’s startup scene it can be hard to tell which companies are worth looking into, and which are just passing fads.

Dropbox
Nowadays it is not many startups that will take on the mighty Google on in a fight, but Dropbox have done just that. On the day the Google launched its new Drive service that allows users to store their files online and synchronise them across platforms, Dropbox’s CEO tweeted: “In other news, @Dropbox is launching a search engine. :)”.

The reason for the rather derisory remark was that Dropbox provided the same services Drive was launching, but for over fours years with monumental success. Drew Houston has a reason to be cocky. In 2009 Steve Jobs made a bid for Dropbox, but failed to secure a deal. Apple went on to produce the iCloud and Google was left behind, until the late introduction of Drive.

But Dropbox is not threatened by these Goliaths. Its file sharing services solved a problem that everyone had: how to access files, photos, and music across countless personal devices. Dropbox replaced the unreliable method of storing files in inboxes, by providing a digital clutter box. Simple, useful and extremely successful. Last year, shortly after its third birthday, Dropbox had 50m users, three times as many as the year before.

The company is still growing. As long as people continue to produce files that need sharing, Dropbox will remain useful. It is particularly appealing for people that have competing software in each of their gadgets. And if users are interested, investors are interested. Last October, interested parties rallied around Dropbox and raised $250m in a fresh wave of investment. Today the company is valued close to $4bn.

Quora
As far as internet starups go, Quora is of noble birth. Founded by two Facebook alumni in 2010, things are looking good for the company right now as it prepares to raise more capital in a second investment round. At face value it might look like a simple question-and-answer forum, but it is much more than that. The website counts former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Ashton Kutcher and even Mark Zuckerberg as some of the 50m users who are asking and answering questions on Quora.

It is simple to use and questions vary from the inane: “How do I boil meat?”, to the rather more sophisticated: “What did Neitzsche think of Kant’s metaphysics?”. Users are identified by name and profession or qualification, and answers are ranked by readers. It is not hard to lose a few hours getting answers to some of life’s most fundamental questions like: “What came first, the chicken or the egg?” But perhaps Quora’s biggest feat is that it has not become a stomping ground of spam answers and internet trolls, like Yahoo Answers, another popular Q&A site.

Because Quora has managed to maintain an extremely high level of discussion, it is a prime platform for ads with target questions (“What is the best French cheese?”), and that could offer a great business opportunity for the firm. However, there are still challenges ahead for Quora. Founders Adam D’Angelo and Charlie Cheever will have to be quick on their feet if they want the company to » continue  to grow without sacrificing its simplicity and cleverness. But investors are confident; Benchmark Capital, a Silicon Valley regular, invested $11m in 2010 and Quora was valued at $86m. It is now said to be gearing up to raise more cash at a $400m valuation.

Square
Unusually, this Silicon Valley startup produces an actual piece of equipment, rather than online buzz. The little square plastic box allows merchants to accept debit and credit card payments from their smartphones or tablets.

The little gadget is no more then a card reader that connects to the phones and tablets through a headphone jack. Square then process the payments with a flat rate of 2.75 percent of the sale, and deposits the money in your account the next day. It has allowed small enterprises of all sorts to expand their business by accepting card payments.

The man behind Square is Jack Dorsey, of Twitter fame, who recruited Keith Rabois, formerly of PayPal. The men claim that Square is the fastest growing startup ever. In less than two years the company has attracted over one million small businesses who use Square to process their card payments in the US. What makes it even more remarkable is that Square achieved this with no business-development team or sales force; it was all word-of-mouth.

In the US the service is popular with everyone from market-stall holders, to therapists and babysitters. The little device has also been making the rounds at political campaigns, as volunteers canvass the streets for votes and donations, processed swiftly on their iPads. Square is on track to process over $5bn in payments this year.

Right now the system is only available in the US, but the potential for global growth is enormous. This year the company is expanding to Latin American, then Europe and Asia. International investors have been flocking in, most notably British entrepreneur Richard Branson. After raising an initial $100m in financing less then a year ago, the company is thought to be raising an additional $250m. All in, Square could be worth well over $4bn right now.

Pinterest
Pinterest may have gotten off to a rocky start; four months after its launch, the social networking site was languishing with a mere 200 users, all from Utah and Iowa. No-one in California was talking about it; no-one wanted to invest in it. But the signs of a surge were there; the number of users was growing between 40 and 50 percent every month, “it’s just that the number started so low that it took a while to get going,” says founder Ben Silbermann. There is the assumption in Silicon Valley that if a company is not successful immediately, it’s a dud. But Silbermann refused to admit defeat. Today, Pinterest  has 10m registered users.

The company is a virtual pin board where users can share images they like from around the web. Users can visit each other’s ‘pin boards’ and can click on images they like. They share recipes, decoration ideas, holidays pictures and so on. More then a social networking site, Pinterest is a site that allows people to converge around shared interests rather then social connections, so the site has become a hit with e-commerce and target advertisers.

The other interesting thing about it is that 85 percent of its users are women, and they are big online shoppers. Research from SteelHouse reported that Pinterest users were 79 percent more likely to purchase something they saw on the site than Facebook users. Pinterest also made sure it was integrated with Facebook from the very start. When a user ‘pins’ something on their board it shows up on their Facebook feed, and all their friends can see what they are interested in.

Like no other social networking site, Pinterest interacts with the world outside the internet. The idea is to get inspired by images and things posted online, then to go out and experience them, with the help of some of the site’s advertisers. Silbermann is not shy about it, “I think we knew from the beginning that we were building a very different kind of product.” It might have taken a while, but it seems that investors are finally paying attention. In May this year, Pinterest raised $100m in financing and is now valued at $1.5bn.

Airbnb
When Airbnb was launched in 2007, most Silicon Valley investors passed on it. It seemed like a pointless idea; an app that allowed people to rent out their spare rooms to travellers. Investors could not see why anyone would want to open their house to strangers. But apparently they do. Today, Airbnb has about 1,000 new homes listed on its site every day.

In the meantime, the site has developed into a community marketplace; listings can be anything between a $4000 a night luxury yacht in Cannes to a seven dollar-a-night bunk bed in Chicago. Reviews and social networking site profiles work to build up trust between users. Over five million reservations have been made through their site to date, according to Airbnb.

A minor PR scandal involving a ransacked home rented through the site made Airbnb rethink its strategy and customer service in 2010. They invested in a $1m Host Guarantee insurance policy and have never looked back. That year, despite the setback, Airbnb grew 800 percent. Investors were quick to see the error of their ways, and flocked to the startup.

Founder Brian Chesky led a round of investments last year that culminated with Airbnb raising over $100m, pushing the company’s value up to $1.3bn.  Airbnb have no plans to slow down despite already being present in over 186 countries. In March, they announced the acquisition of UK rival startup Crashpadder, and cornered the market for short-term rentals for the London 2012 Olympics. “We knew that London was going to be a major focus for us in 2012 with the Olympics on the horizon,” Chesky said in a statement. “Now, with the addition of the Crashpadder community we are making huge strides to ensure that thousands of Olympic visitors will have a unique and local experience as Londoners open their door to the world during the games and beyond.”

Personalised medicine: A window into the future

Posted on by Ben Debski

A series of robotic arms move in tandem collecting minute samples of fluid from a set of multicoloured test-tubes. The fluid is deposited in another set of glass vials that automatically start to vibrate, creating whirlpools inside the small jars. Scientists wearing blue rubber gloves and oversized plastic goggles observe the process, their eyes fixed on a large plasma screen showing rows and rows of coloured spots. In every corner of the lab sophisticated machines buzz and whir, each occupied with an infinitely precise task that cannot be trusted to the human hand: mixing, measuring, extracting and decoding. In the far corner another machine engraves aluminium plates with rows and rows of little circles, each one nanometre in diameter, each containing a minute portion of the human genome, ready to be read by a super computer. Just one of those little metal plates costs thousands of dollars, and could just hold the key to the future of medicine.

However, this room is not a set in a science fiction film, it is one of many such laboratories all over the world that decodes an individual’s DNA and maps out their genetic material. This is the first step toward what experts are calling ‘personalised medicine’, “a medical philosophy that uses a person’s individual clinical, genetic, genomic, and environmental information to tailor a treatment plan that will maximise efficacy and safety for that individual,” according to Paul Wolpe, Professor of Bioethics at Emory University.

Today scientists are able to genotype not only human DNA but also the DNA of specific diseases

Personalised medicine is being hailed as the future of medicine. The idea is that if we know in detail each patient’s individual traits, we can treat them efficiently, safely and cost-effectively. It is based on two developing technologies: genetic-testing and targeted pharmaceuticals. By testing a person’s genetic material, it will be possible to identify particular genetic profiles and genotypes that will influence the likelihood of an individual developing certain diseases, what course these diseases will proceed through, and other factors such as the individual’s metabolic rates, which affect how drugs are absorbed and processed in the body. By analysing a patient’s genetic profile it will be possible to determine how they might react to certain medication, and drug treatment will be far more adequate to each patient’s needs.

Just ten years ago, getting your genome mapped for personalised medicine would have cost over $75,000 in one of a handful of private labs in the US and would have scarcely been available elsewhere in the world. But the industry has moved in leaps and bounds since then. Today for a mere $300 it is possible to get a basic genetic screen that will reveal predisposition to the most common forms of cancer, other genetic diseases like Parkinson’s, Type-2 Diabetes and even chronic joint pain, as well as metabolic rates for drug absorption and genetic traits such as muscle performance. There is no need to go to a lab or visit a geneticist. Collection kits are mailed to and from the lab and a small spittle in a little plastic test tube provides more then enough genetic material for testing. Within two to three weeks the results are made available online, complete with a range of easy-to-read graphs and detailed reports on specific findings. . The most complete testing currently costs around $5,000 and produces an intricately detailed analysis of genetic material and reveals complexities about the body, and how it is likely to change and deteriorate over time. This more expensive genetic service investigates each individual’s drug responses and gene mutations.

The process has been used for a number of years to identify causes of diseases of difficult diagnosis, and was previously too expensive to be commercially viable. Companies that offer this type of genetic mapping are often research facilities as well, working in tandem with pharmaceutical companies, providing the bioinformatics and genetics needed for whole genome studies of human disease or drug response.

The gene game
Genetic testing has been used for a number of years, especially to assist in the diagnosis of genetic conditions such as Huntington’s disease. It has also been available for people who have a family history of certain types of cancer, who can choose to know if they are likely or not to develop the disease. Doctors believe that prediction can lead to an early diagnosis by increasing the frequency of screening for people who are more likely to develop these conditions. Early diagnosis drastically reduces the cost of treatment and improves survival rates. But this type of predisposition testing can also open the door to more drastic responses. Some women have opted to remove their breasts or ovaries when a genetic screening shows they are likely to develop cancer. However, it is unquestionable that personalised medicine will bring countless advances to the medical field. “Despite many advances in the drug therapy for many diseases, treatment remains suboptimal for a significant proportion of individuals because of unpredictable side-effects of medication or lack of response from the patient,” says Wolpe. Anti-depressants for instance, are notorious for their wildly discrepant reactions in different patients; a simple genetic profile would, in theory, be able to determine what types of patients are more suited to what types of medication, and the doses required.

With all this research, pharmaceutical companies now have a better idea of how their drugs work, and why they occasionally fail

The field of genetics has developed at a staggering pace in the past twenty years. Today scientists are able to genotype not only human DNA but also the DNA of specific diseases. Each cancer has its own genetic information; complete with the gene mutations that cause the abnormal growths. By genotyping the disease – in a case-by-case fashion – for the first time ever researchers are getting a glimpse at what is causing its development and how to tackle those faulty mutations without harming other, healthy cells. This process is still in its infancy, but researchers are confident that soon the disease can be conquered. Drugs can now be developed to target specific metabolising agents in the body, treating diseases at their root cause. This type of drug testing is known as pharmacogenetics. Having access to large pools of genetic profiles will almost certainly help streamline drug research and clinical testing. In the long run, personalised medicine will save hospitals, insurance companies and patients lots of money through targeted therapies which will help avoid less successful treatments. Collective genetic profile statistics will also enable national health providers such as the NHS to choose the best overall drug treatments for the population.

With all this new research, pharmaceutical companies now have a much better idea of how their drugs work, and why they occasionally fail. In an attempt to perfect their products, some pharmaceutical companies are partnering up with private labs to develop simple genetic tests to accompany their drugs. The tests determine if the patient is likely to respond well to the medication, and what dose should be administered. That is the case for Warfarin, a blood thinner notoriously difficult to dose. In 2008 the American Food and Drug Administration started recommending patients prescribed the drug to undergo a genetic test in order to determine the appropriate dosage and thus avoid complications and even in some very rare occassions, death. The genetic tests are expensive but “avoiding one hospitalisation could underwrite the cost of the test for 100 patients,” according to Dr Robert S Epstein, chief medical officer at Medco Health Solutions, the pharmaceutical company behind Warfarin.

However, pharmacogenetics is an expensive process. Right now, large pharmaceutical corporations test irrespective of DNA, and so the pool of research is developed somewhat randomly. Standard practice does not involve testing developing drugs on groups with specific genetic profiles. As a result, drug tests are carried out in genetically random cross sections of a population. If there are too many adverse reactions, the drug is scrapped.

This way companies can cast the medication’s net as widely as possible; a ‘blockbuster drug’ that will corner the market for treatment of a specific type of illness and help a vast number of patients. With any luck, the new product will sell well, generate billions of dollars in profit, and pay for its research many times over, enabling pharmaceutical companies to invest in new research for new drugs.

Personalised medicine providers are planning on selling their services to employers, expressly in the US, where healthcare is part of employment packages

But with the arrival of genetic mapping technology, pharmaceutical companies are reassessing their approach to research. Because it is now possible to determine what types of genetic profiles are likely to respond well to any particular treatment, and why sometimes drugs have adverse or no effects at all, medication is becoming increasingly bespoke. The possibility of blockbuster drugs is dwindling. Pharmaceutical companies are being forced to embrace the potential benefits of niche market drugs with high success rates. The trouble is research and development costs are » too high for drugs that will only ever have the potential to be sold to a fraction of the population. The gamble is that increased safety and high success rates will encourage the use of the treatments and make up for the smaller markets for each drug. Pharmacogenetics will also help to salvage drugs that have previously been deemed failures. Sometimes drug development is aborted when too many patients have adverse reactions. Through genetic testing, it will be possible to identify what caused the bad side effects, and who is likely to suffer from them. If the drug is still successful in a portion of the population, it might still be commercially viable, albeit on a smaller scale. Genetic testing will minimise the number of drugs that get completely abandoned, thus helping to make research budgets much more efficient.

From blockbusters to flops
Cystic fibrosis is a chronic disease that affects one in every 2,000 new-borns. Because of a genetic mutation, the lungs of people with the condition are unable to clear away mucous, causing chronic infections and permanent damage to the organs. In later stages lung transplants often become necessary. The disease is nearly always fatal, and most sufferers do not make it past the age of 30. Through genetic testing, a private lab in the US has managed to identify the genetic mutation that leads to the faulty protein. There are over 1,800 variations that cause the disease, but through extensive research the lab managed to produce two drugs that will work on the majority of mutations. The treatment makes cystic fibrosis a manageable disease, not a life sentence. But it comes with a hefty price-tag; just one year of treatment costs $294,000.

There are also the millions of dollars the lab spent on over 10 years of research. That value is slightly offset by less frequent hospital visits and overnight stays for emergency treatment. When put in treatment from a young age, it is less likely that sufferers will require lung transplants, relieving a massive burden on the system. With so many variables, it is still difficult to determine if the drugs will be economically viable, both for the patients and the labs producing them.

When pharmacogenetics are prevalent it is likely pharmaceutical companies will try to develop new drugs for the most common genotypes or genetic profiles that best respond to treatment. It will be more economically viable for companies to develop drugs that effectively treat the greatest variety of genetic profiles and the most dominant.

But by actively favouring the most prevalent genotypes pharmaceutical companies might risk making whole sections of the population ‘therapeutic orphans’; large groups of people with genotypes that will be deemed too difficult to treat, and thus less likely to receive adequate medical care. This is an issue that has started to be addressed though legislation.

The US and EU have both already began extensive grant programmes for research and development on ‘orphan medications’.

Genetic mapping will make available information that is inherently private. Even if names are removed in databases, DNA is unique and always traceable to the source

Personalised medicine is so far only widely available in North America and parts of Europe. However, in the US it has already started to generate a minor avalanche of insurance reimbursement problems. Wolpe describes instances of unequal treatment of two individuals with the same disease diagnosis: “Two persons may have slightly different mutations of the same gene, both predisposing them to a genetic disorder. One’s common genotype requires $500 worth of pharmacogenetic medication per year, the other’s rare genotype requires $100,000. How will the insurance system handle this disparity?”

In many states in the US the law already allows for long-term care, disability and life insurers to discriminate based on genetics. Someone making more expensive claims will always be charged higher premiums, but health and life insurers might start denying coverage for people with predispositions to incurable diseases, or difficult to treat genotypes. In this case, personalised medicine might also become an intolerable financial burden around the neck of everyday citizens.

But in some ways, personalised medicine is opening new avenues of business within the medical industry. Personalised medicine providers are planning on selling their services to employers, particularly in the US, where healthcare is part of the employment package. Companies have so far been receptive, eager to pay higher healthcare fees for improved treatment outcomes and, crucially, lower prescription costs.

Mapping the future
Scientists are already envisioning a future where a genetic map of any type of disease or cancer will point the way to treatment. With accessible genetic testing for a patient seeking treatment, doctors will know exactly what dose of the exact drug someone will require.

Deadly diseases will become more manageable and predispositions for chronic conditions will be offset. But there is still a lack of understanding; the more researchers look into genomes, more and more new complexities arise. Not all conditions relate to a single gene like cystic fibrosis; Type-2 diabetes for instance relates to at least 18 different genes. For research to progress successfully and start to tackle big diseases like diabetes and cancer, scientists are going to have to start studying larger and larger pools of genetic profiles. Any widespread use of personal medicine will undoubtedly rely on a more systematic application of genetic testing.

The fetishisation of genetics is something that needs to be handled very carefully. If too much emphasis is put on genetic profiles as diagnosis tools, we run the risk of downplaying environmental factors. Even a person with a small genetic propensity to heart conditions might develop one if they are excessively overweight and don’t exercise.

And if, sometime in the future, humanity is entirely genotyped, then the door could be left wide open to genetic discrimination, or some form of eugenics. For all the potential benefits of personalised medicine, the field of genetics could also be seen as an ethical minefield which needs to be universally regulated. In countries such as Britain, where health services are nationalised, the strain that personalised medicine will put on the system are incalculable. Without appropriate consideration and regulation, personal medicine might not ever achieve its full potential as a life-saving approach to medicine.

The future of personalised medicine will rely on costly widespread genetic mapping which has the risk of overburdening an already fragile healthcare system. There is also the chance that healthy individuals might not want to have their genomes mapped. There are real issues of privacy involved in this matter. Genetic mapping will make available information that is inherently private. Even if names are removed in databases, DNA is unique to every individual and is always traceable back to its source. Even in the name of science, it isn’t surprising that people might be reluctant to have personal information made public.

James Watson, the legendary scientist who discovered the DNA double helix, was one of the very first people to have his DNA mapped several years ago. Watson, then already an old man, is reported to have agreed to the process with the condition that no one look at the genes associated with Alzheimer’s disease. He said he simply did not want to know.

And it is easy to see why; Alzheimer’s is a brutal degenerative condition, and it is incurable. Like the scientist, not many people would like to receive this type of information. Some scientists would like to see widespread testing of all newborns at birth, but we must ask how this would affect the lives of these children. Born healthy, but with a higher-then-average chance of maybe one day developing a degenerative disease, it would be like a death sentence at birth, and it could be argued as a clear violation of these children’s privacy.

Right now the main obstacle to the development of personalised medicine as a viable and lucrative business model is the high cost of investment. Before we can seriously consider the widespread use of genetic mapping to treat diseases on an individual basis we must first consider how much we do not know, and how much technology still has to be developed before we can fill these gaps.

“Even if you spend a lot of money and get your genome sequenced, you might think you are going to understand a lot but in reality you probably won’t. We only know the genetic basis for 200 or so genes that you can actually do anything about, or even understand. Most of those are incredibly rare. But there is not enough information to know how to interpret our genome information. That might not be true forever, but it is true right now,” says Dr Michael Snyder, Professor of genetics at Stanford University in California. The human genome has billions of genes with an infinite variety of combinations, it will still be years before we understand it all and all its complexities.

There is very little data on how genetic and non-genetic factors interact, and how these interactions might affect treatment. Researchers are not even sure if individuals respond consistently to a drug treatment over a long time. And there is always the chance that the genetic testing required for pharmacogenetics will turn up far more diseases than cures.