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The CEO of the world’s leading DNA sequencing company says he knows how to finally get consumers interested in their genomes: by creating an enormous app store for genetic information.
Yesterday, Illumina said that along with Warburg Pincus and Sutter Hill Ventures it was investing $100 million in a new company called Helix to make consumer genomics part of the Internet mainstream.
Illumina’s CEO, Jay Flatley, said in an interview that Helix will subsidize the cost of decoding people’s genomes in hopes of spurring the creation of consumer apps that will draw on the DNA data repeatedly. “You saw what happened with the Apple app store: it just unleashed the consumer side because apps are so cheap to make,” says Flatley, who will be chairman of the new company.
Flatley says that when Helix goes live next year it will sequence and store consumers’ DNA, then sell them pay-as-you-go access to it through the apps, which will be offered by partners, the first of which are LabCorp and the Mayo Clinic. Profits will get shared, in a model similar...