If you want to do some reading up on the topic, this site may offer some help, along with the upcoming conference to be imageheld here in the Los Angeles area in October.  As posted recently there are plans for many of the service companies, such as 23andMe, Navigenics, DeCode, LabCorp, and perhaps some others who anticipate starting up their sales and marketing campaigns to bring some of this information to the physician's office and patient level.  Genetic counseling can also play a vital role in figuring out how this new service comes in to play with healthcare.  It almost reminds of of the marketing and sales efforts of the CT scans when they came in to play several years ago, and everyone including Oprah was racing out to have it done.  The consumer side of CT scanning had since died down quite a bit, but the technology lives on in healthcare with CT scans being a part of the normal diagnostic processes. 

This is a bit more complicated in the process as different companies have different items they identify markers for, as an example Navigenics is pretty much tied to the healthcare side, while other companies offer more in the way of family history items.  Read each one and see which might fit your need before jumping in.  These are not a full human genome study as which is now priced around $350.000.00 and takes 5-6 weeks to complete, although you can sign up and see if you are accepted for the volunteer process, but to do so, you need to make your genomic, not personal, information available for study.  So far there have been 10 complete studies done that are published.

 You can read more here about the complete process.

 There are also the companies that manufacture the machines that do the software work and processing used by the service companies, such as Helicos, Illumina, Affymetrix and the Polonator, and there might be a few more.  These are the companies who create the machines that do the work.  Not too long ago I had a nice chat and interview with Dr. Milos from Helicos who gave some great insight as to how their process works and the overall progression of how genomics is going and where the future lies.  The service companies are licensed from one of the manufacturers, so they all work hand in hand. 

One more item to add here just for technology sake is the ability of the software to run on some Microsoft Surface Technology, allowing for a real hands on experience to work live.  

Below is a bit more information from the Foundation that might be immediate areas of interest and more can be found at imagethe site. 

For anyone desiring to become a genomic counselor, there's also the American Board of Genetic Counseling that gives additional information on how to become certified and further involved in the process.   

The GCF was founded by the National Society of Genetic  Counselors in 2005 with the mission to serve as the catalyst for the integration of genomic information and genetic counseling services into healthcare through philanthropic support of education, research, and public policy.

My Practice

Information for My Patients

NSGC: Genetic Counseling Foundation

0 comments :

Post a Comment

 
Top
Google Analytics Alternative