JEFF DEMAIN NEW MARKETS
At this year’s X Games, snowboarders will be fitted with an IoT setup allowing viewers to see competition performance data, in real time.
How optics
improved my snowboarding
I t was a delight to learn about the interest people had in my ECOC 2015 Market Focus talk. What I learned in discussions with the audience after the talk was that we in the optics industry are very much “heads down,” meaning we are typically focused deeply on our optics technology and advancing our products. This is quite understandable as the optics world is filled with brilliant and passionate people focused on the advancement of optics. But what we need to do as a mental exercise is to be “heads up” from time to time. Let’s be delighted and energised by what our optical technologies enable in enhancing and enriching peoples’ lives and the world we live in. This is indeed an exciting time for optics as illustrated by a look at key areas that optics enable. PRECISIONMEDICINE Cancer impacts nearly every one of us, either directly, within our families, or with a close friend. And this remains true even though tremendous advances have been made in cancer detection and treatments. The next major advancement in battling cancer is likely to come from personalised care, or what is often referred to as precision medicine. For personalised care to be truly transformative, doctors need to identify and then attack the molecular abnormalities that are coded in each cancer tumor’s DNA profile. Next-
For optical systems developers to make the most of new opportunities and to transfer maximum benefits they should look far beyond the conventional markets.
JEFF DEMAIN
generation computational technologies are being developed now to dramatically increase the speed and lower the costs associated with the genomic sequencing of these tumors to accomplish this. Today, most patients are still in a trial- and-error treatment model, with only about 1% of cancer patient’s treatments being guided by the results of genomic sequencing. But the results for those that have been are impressive. Eric Dishman, the Director of the Unites States’ National Institute of Health Precision Medicine Cohort Program (https:// www.nih.gov/about-nih/who-we-are/ nih-director/statements/selection-eric- dishman-director-precision-medicine- initiative-cohort-program), is himself an example of success using personalised treatments. Starting in his teenage years and continuing on for 23 years, Eric had repeatedly battled cancer. He got his genome sequenced five years ago, which
led to the recommendation to try a drug for a completely di erent cancer. Six months later, he was healthy and is now cancer free. Intel and its ecosystems partners are working to empower researchers and doctors to help patients receive a diagnosis based on their genome and potentially arm clinicians with the data needed for a targeted treatment plan. By 2020, they envision this happening in 24 hours -- All in one day. With only 4% of cancer patient’s data collected and made available for research via clinical trials today, the remaining 96% of data is locked away at each individual hospital. That makes it awfully hard for researchers at any given hospital to access a big enough pool of data to make new discoveries and find potentially life-saving insights. The Collaborative Cancer Cloud, built in conjunction with OHSU and other leading cancer institutions, is a distributed
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| ISSUE 7 | Q3 2016
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