Ready or not, genomics is coming to hospitals

This year, at a faster pace than many industry insiders anticipated, we're seeing genomics enter the world of real-life care for patients. It took researchers 13 years and about $3 billion to complete the Human Genome Project. A decade later, companies like Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN) and Life Technologies (NASDAQ: LIFE) are in a fierce competition to sequence genomes at industrial scale, for as little as $1,000 apiece in a single day. But this year we are seeing an increasing wave of demand emerging from hospitals, clinics, and leading physicians who want to take advantage of the new fast and cheap sequencing tools to see if they can be used to help patients.