President Barack Obama's State of the Union Address on Tuesday night touted two proposals that could alter the healthcare landscape this year: Personalized medicine and cybersecurity.
Obama's cybersecurity plan calls for increased sharing of information on cyberthreats from the private sector with protection from liability.
The Precision Medicine Initiative aims to increase the use of personalized information in healthcare.
"I want the country that eliminated polio and mapped the human genome to lead a new era of medicine--one that delivers the right treatment at the right time," Obama said.
Private funding for genomics in 2014 reached $632 million, according to StartUp Health's annual digital health report. Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Translational Science Institute in San Diego, has previously said that while the U.S. is a little ways from genome testing becoming routine, a strong case can be made for using whole genome sequencing for initial cancer diagnoses.
U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who heads up the 21st Century Cures initiative, called for more bipartisanship following Obama's speech.
"More life-saving cures, more affordable energy and more innovation and jobs are all part of our vision for a better America," Upton said in a statement. "It's time to get to work, Republicans and Democrats together, and get the job done."
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