What Netflix can teach us about treating cancer

Today, there is unprecedented public access to cancer genetics data

Two years ago, former President Barack Obama announced the Precision Medicine initiative in his State of the Union Address. The initiative aspired to a “new era of medicine” where disease treatments could be specifically tailored to each patient’s genetic code.

This resonated soundly in cancer medicine. Patients can already manage their cancer with therapies that target the specific genes that are altered in their particular tumor. For example, women with a type of breast cancer caused by the amplification of gene HER2 are often treated with a therapeutic called herceptin. Because these targeted therapeutics are specific