Medicine in an era of exponential technological change: what will this mean for you, and for Australia?

Medicine in an era of exponential technological change: what will this mean for you, and for Australia?

We are in the midst of a transformation of medical technology, driven in large part by parallel exponential changes in three areas of technology: genomics, which provides high-resolution data about the molecular composition of our bodies; data science and AI, which allow us to identify patterns in these data; and therapeutics, which provides increasingly precise ways to intervene in human biology to prevent or cure disease. In combination, these technologies define the emerging field of genomic medicine, which has already had a profound impact on the diagnosis of genetic disorders and the treatment of cancer, and has the potential to improve virtually all areas of healthcare. However, these technologies also create new challenges, including maintaining high quality in an era of rapid change; potential increases in the cost of healthcare; and equity of access and impact. Prof MacArthur will outline the potential of the field of genomic medicine and summarise the challenges ahead, acknowledging that resolving them will require a multi-pronged strategy across research, healthcare systems, policy, and society.

This event is a hybrid event and can be attended in-person or virtually.

About the Speaker

Professor Daniel MacArthur is a human genomicist with over two decades of experience at the interface between human biomedicine, large-scale genomics, and data science. From 2012-2019 he served as Co-Director of the Medical and Population Genetics Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and led the development of the Genome Aggregation Database (gnomAD), the world's largest accessible resource of human genetic data. In 2020 he returned to Australia as the inaugural Director of the Centre for Population Genomics, a joint initiative between the Garvan Institute of Medical Research, Sydney and Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Melbourne, focused on leveraging large-scale genomic and analytical tools to build a more equitable foundation for genomic medicine. He also leads the Australian Alliance for Secure Genomics and AI in Rare Disease (AASGARD) consortium, a national effort to validate and apply new analytical tools in the diagnosis of severe genetic diseases.

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