Although the application of digital biology raises profound ethical, governmental, and environmental questions, these technologies provide a great opportunity to solve some of humanity’s global grand challenges, such as health, food, water, energy, the environment, and even space.

1. The Future of Your Health—
Through Biotech
Dr. Tiffany Vora
April 24, 2019

3. Healthcare Solutions:
Information Abundance

4. Shutterstock

5. Human
Genome
Project:
$2.7 billion
Next-generation
sequencing (2008)
$1000
genome

7. Jurvetson [flickr]

8. Andrew Kilianski

9. Shutterstock

10. Shutterstock

11. Who owns your
health data?!

12. Nebula Genomics
Shutterstock

13. Who protects you and
your health data?!

14. [The goal] is to provide higher quality health care
through the promotion of access to genetic tests by
suppressing the fear that the results of these tests be
used for insurance or employment purposes ... The
situation is completely distinguishable from the
exercise of federal jurisdiction over criminal law
regarding tobacco or illicit drugs, which intrinsically
present a threat to public health. That is not the case
for genetic tests … it is a matter of determining which
level of government ... holds the power to legislate on
the subject.
—Quebec Court of Appeal
December 2018 Shutterstock
May 2017: Genetic Nondiscrimination
Act Adopted by Federal Parliament

15. Healthcare Solutions:
Personalized & Digital

16. Diagnosis
Discovery Therapy
Shutterstock, NCI

17. Diagnostics

18. Dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer
with deep neural networks
Esteva et al., Nature (2017)
129,450 images
& diagnoses

19. Therapy

20. Shutterstock
Therapy

21. Discovery
Emulate
emulate

22. Healthcare Solutions:
What About Tomorrow?

24. Is it ok to edit an entire species?
!
… including humans?

28. Is there a need?
Can it be done?
Is it legal?
Should it be done?
Ramsey et al., PLoS Negl Trop Dis (2014)Shutterstock

29. Today’s Takeaways
All life runs on the same open-source operating system
that outputs data
The biology is the technology
Medicine is increasingly personalized and real time
Technical, ethical, & moral questions need answers now

30. Thank you!
Dr. Tiffany Vora
Faculty Director
Vice Chair, Digital Biology & Medicine
tiffany.vora@su.org
Remind me that we met at
the SUCanada Summit!

31. Further exploration
! Biotechnology and genetics articles, Singularity Hub
! Exponential Medicine articles and resources, Singularity Hub
! Deloitte’s Global Life Sciences Outlook (2016)
! Deloitte’s Health Care and Life Sciences Predictions 2020
! CB Insights’ Industry Market Maps (scroll down for Healthcare)
! Rewriting Life, MIT Technology Review
! Science & Technology, The Economist
! Healthcare, PwC
! What is Biohacking and Should We Be Afraid of It?
! Exponential Medicine and SingularityU YouTube channels

32. Social
networks
Direct
Consumer
Products
Clinical
& Basic
Research
Hospital
& Clinic
Today’s Takeaways

33. Programmable & Personalized: Cell Therapies
Shutterstock, balapagos, King’s College London, Zeiss Microscopy
The Power of Stem Cells