A leading Silicon Valley based Venture Capital (VC) fund called Andreessen Horowitz recently announced a Bio Fund. This is not very surprising in itself as lots of VC funds set up sector-specific funds to invest in companies that are likely to grow into much bigger companies over time. However, what is different about this fund is the way they are going about it. They have said that their focus is on three big areas – “computational biomedicine”, “cloud biology” and “digital therapeutics”.

Computational biomedicine is the usage of machine intelligence and developments in computer technologies like image recognition and pattern matching to human reports like x-rays, eye test results etc. to come up with a more accurate diagnosis than a trained radiologist can do. As an additional tool to medical specialists, this would significantly reduce the rate of mis-diagnosis and make tele-medicine viable thereby, helping healthcare reach far-flung people at a fraction of the current costs.

Cloud biology is the application of cloud computing theories to biological research. Just like in cloud computing, a bio researcher can tap into a large number of computational resources at reasonable costs in order to conduct experiments that were previously unthinkable. This helps in using robots to conduct a lot of experiments, which actually aids in achieving reproducibility of scientific results while crunching the cost and time involved.

Digital therapeutics is the third area that they have chosen as a domain to invest in. This domain focuses on treating medical situations through behavioral solutions. Egging a diabetic to focus on his eating habits, pushing him to exercise regularly are some of the ways to control Type II diabetes. The plethora of digital assistants and wearables that calculate personal data is allowing the development of this domain rather quickly.

As you can see, these areas, which are cutting edge today, are really obliterating the lines of domains – computer science, biology, psychology, robotics, physics etc. As someone entering the workforce in the next few years, one has to understand that the jobs of the future will fall along similar patterns. Assimilating information, ability to find patterns, transcend domains and creating new solutions would become the de facto job description. Success in such an environment would primarily depend on one’s ability to reason critically, communicate and collaborate with others – skills we encourage our kids to start developing today.

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