Any followers of Ray Kurzweil will be all too familiar with his belief in exponential progress.  It is at the heart of his thesis on the coming singularity, and no doubt plays a big role in his Singularity University (SU) venture.  Whilst exponential gains have been seen in a wide range of informational fields, it hasn’t really made its way into healthcare yet, where costs remain stubbornly high (and rising) throughout the western world.

Singularity University are attempting to rectify that situation however with the launch of a new event exploring how exponential progress can find its way into healthcare.  The event, called Exponential Medicine, takes its inspiration from the rapidly declining price of mapping the human genome, which has plummeted from hundreds of million for the first, to around $1,000 just a decade later, with the price set to continue falling rapidly over the coming years.

SU believe that this process will herald a rise in personalized and precise medicine, with genomics done at scale, and data analyzed by a mixture of crowdsourcing and advanced analytics.

They also believe that exponential trends will see greater use of AI, robotics, data analytics, regenerative medicine and various other fields that will be made possible by the exponential improvements made in information processing.

The conference will explore how this will influence healthcare, and how healthcare leaders can begin to implement these innovations to provide better and more cost effective care.

The four day event will run from the 9th to the 12th November in the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, and features a fascinating range of speakers.

You can find out more about the event, and SU’s work in this field, via the video below.