The high-tech and biotech industries have historically followed different paths. As Moore’s Law made everything in high-tech cheaper, innovation in biotech seemed to make drugs and devices more expensive. That’s changing fast, thanks to the collapsing price of gene sequencing. Biotech companies are now scrambling to analyze and manage the flood of data spewing out of those machines.
This week, the two paths meet at the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. About 20,000 health care executives, entrepreneurs and investors are flying in for three days of meetings and glad-handing in and around Union Square.