SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Translating novel technology into the care delivery system is not easy, according to Maulik Majmudar, medical officer at Bellevue, Wash.-based Amazon.com Inc. In fact, he said at the Precision Medicine World Conference that “it’s a hot mess.” In his presentation, Majmudar spoke about the classic barriers that prevent technologies from getting adopted at scale in a timeline that's usually feasible for early- and mid-stage startups – and even for large companies – and developing strategies to overcome those challenges.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Diabetes seems likely to be the first area to really show concrete products and results for the ambitious Verily Life Sciences, which is the med-tech business of Mountain View, Calif.-based Google parent Alphabet Inc. However, its two major diabetes partners both have been rethinking the relationship.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – While many of the presentations at the Precision Medicine World Conference revolved around clinical studies and their promise for future breakthroughs in health care, a continuous stream of companies made their pitches for translating these studies into actual products that can benefit patients now.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – It has never been easy to get payers to reimburse in a timely and adequate fashion for novel diagnostics, making it notoriously difficult to build a business from them. But a few high-flying diagnostics companies, such as Madison, Wis.-based Exact Sciences Corp. and Redwood City, Calif.-based Guardant Health Inc., have been blazing the trail recently on how to rapidly scale up to become valuable commercial entities from origins as a research-based startup.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Just as it does with treatments, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) offers detailed guidelines on genomic testing by cancer type. These are key in determining what physicians can prescribe routinely and what insurers will cover. But those guidelines aren’t followed regularly outside a major research hospital setting, thereby obviating access to tumor genetic information that could help to better guide treatment. Even if current guidelines are followed, physicians and patients can get information back from the tests that neither party is prepared to process.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. – Peter Thiel is not a fan of incremental science. The high-profile venture capital investor, who invests across technology and the life sciences via various vehicles, including the Founders Fund, suggested that as academic and government bureaucracies have scaled up and rigidified over the last 50 or 60 years, that has eroded the ability of researchers to pursue innovative science.