Personalized medicine: Where does all the computer power go?

According to The Economist, we are now seeing buyouts which combine firms producing gene sequencing machines and those providing diagnostic services based on individual genomes. The idea is that health services will be an important market for information as to which drugs will or will not work in which patients. That knowledge can not only make prescriptions more efficacious, but may well also save the service providers a lot of money which would otherwise be spent on ineffective remedies and treatment of drug reactions.

The cost of decoding someone's genome is likely to fall from $50,000 now to $100 by 2015 or 2020, making all kinds of things possible—but only if the value of the genetic information is far greater than it is today.