Cianan Brennan: Putting a market value on genetic data

Genuity’s endeavours with the Irish public’s genetic data raise questions as to why the Government has not become involved in orchestrating a publicly-funded genomics project which would cost a fraction of the price of the private one, and would see the collated data returned to the public domain

The health and wellbeing sphere has been far from immune to the encroachment of big data. Last month, Blackstone Group, a giant American private-equity multinational, acquired about 75% of Ancestry.com in a deal worth the guts of €4bn.

It’s 2020, and we’re not yet flying around in hovercars. Yet the world is a fundamentally different place to what it was 20 years ago.

Back then, mobile phones were becoming increasingly common, but the smart device revolution was still several years away. Facebook wouldn’t appear before 2005. Google existed, but was many years removed from the all-conquering behemoth we know now.