Medicine’s Wild West: 10 new genetic tests enter the market each day

There are 75,000 genetic tests available for sale today -- a flood of information that could provide major new insights into health or an unwieldy abundance of information that overloads doctors and drives medical spending higher.

A new study in the journal Health Affairs reveals an explosion of genetic tests over the past four years, with about 10 new ones entering the market each day. Another study, of hundreds of primary-care providers in New York City, found only a third had ever ordered a genetic test or referred a patient for counseling. A minority -- 14 percent -- said they felt confident interpreting results.

The studies point to the huge opportunity and challenges that face the booming business of clinical genomics, which is forecast to grow to a $7.7 billion global industry by 2020. As the cost of sequencing genes has plummeted and tests have proliferated, the knowledge about the best practical uses of such information in the real world has remained relatively nascent. Doctors want better tools to support their decisions.

“If I were a provider trying to figure out what to order, that's...