Experts Provide Much-Needed Policy Analysis for Clinical Integration of Next Generation Sequencing

As genetic sequencing technologies continue to evolve rapidly, becoming part of clinical care, there is a critical need to establish appropriate policies and regulatory frameworks to address potential challenges, legal and ethical experts have said. A special policy issue of the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics published online today and edited by experts with the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor College of Medicine gives policy makers the tools to jumpstart this process.

Experts with the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at Baylor were tapped to serve as editors of this special issue of the journal, which addressed a variety of topics including U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulation, reimbursement, intellectual property issues, and proprietary databases. They did so with the help of a $1.6 million National Human Genome Research Institute grant to Dr. Amy McGuire, director of the Center and a leading expert on legal and ethical issues in genetics. The grant allowed experts to study how the evolution of the next generation sequencing industry impacts these major policy areas.

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