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17LEGAL MEDICOMAGAZINESponsored by:advancement, such as bespoke cancer treatments. There is also the risk of significant harm. In 2013, the US Food and Drug Administration determined that a particular genotyping test was intended for the 'diagnosis of disease…or in the cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease' and warned of the potential consequences of false positive or false negative results. Worse still is the prospect of our genetic data falling into the hands of other, shadier, third parties. A biological data breach, for example, is much more invasive than someone stealing your bank details – your biological passport can’t be restored with a new pin number or password. Once it’s out there, your entire genetic make up is available to the highest bidder.All of this points to something of a Big Data headache. The raw data from one genome alone amounts to around 200GB, with every genome offering millions of variants from a reference model. The data generated by the NHS’s 100,000 Genomes project alone is therefore significant in itself, and all of it needs to be protected from those wanting to exploit it for the wrong reasons. As technology makes the data easier and cheaper to obtain, obvious questions arise – how is my genetic data held? How securely, by whom and to what end?The direction of travel for analysing data also points towards future risk. Filtering down millions of DNA combinations to isolate just a few harmful ones inevitably requires the input of artificial intelligence. Again, this opens the door to potential cyber threats and creates a product liability chain that extends beyond doctors and pharmaceutical manufacturers.The potential for DNA Sequencing, both the positive and negative, is clearly huge and it’s a door we’re unlikely to close again. When you consider that the cost of discovering your genetic make up costs less than a new iPhone, it’s not hard to believe this could very quickly become an industry in itself. And as with any industry, insurers will need to be ready to pick up the pieces.