Sony gets into genetic analysis with aim of helping docs pick better treatments
We tend to forget that many companies celebrated for their shiny things also have significant interest in health care; everyone gets sick, after all. Sony is one of this gang, producing medical-grade equipment and the like under its own name, as well as buying up and investing in outfits that have other, specific expertise. Starting February 2014, Sony will also become part owner of P5, a new venture that'll provide human genome analysis in Japan, which just happens to be one of the world's largest pharmaceutical/biotechnology markets. With help from M3, which Sony's invested in, and DNA specialists Illumina, P5's quest is also to marry genetic data with other info, like medical histories, to make headway in the area of personalized medicine (where therapies are selected for the individual, not just the affliction). We doubt Kaz Hirai will be heavily involved, aside from his efforts to find the "Xbox fanboy gene" and any way to silence it, of course.
Dan Cooper contributed his image manipulations skills to this report.
