With individualized medicine—one of the holy grails of modern healthcare—diagnosis and treatment of patients would rely in part on each individual’s specific DNA profile, enabling truly personalized care. But in order for genetic information to contribute meaningfully to patient care, DNA testing has to be affordable and efficient. In 2017, the Mayo Clinic Center for Individualized Medicine (CIM) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign embarked on a two-year Grand Challenge under the auspices of the Mayo Clinic & Illinois Alliance for Technology-Based Healthcare with the goal of making DNA analysis a possibility for every patient. The first aim of the project focused on finding faster methods for clinical analysis of the whole human genome.
