Sequencing in China is on a rapid rise, with the country accounting for 20%–30% of global sequencing capacity. Driving this growth is China’s 15-year precision medicine program (see IBO 1/31/16). The multi-billion dollar budget of the initiative will be used for improving precision medicine technology, sequencing, analyzing over a million human genomes, and drug development and data collection to enable personalized health care. In September, Chinese sequencing powerhouse BGI plans to open the China National Genebank, which will contain millions of genomic samples from animals, people and microbes; this is on top of the firm’s own database of one million sequenced human genomes. China is also moving forward with advancements in cancer genetics analysis; for example, last year, Cloud Health provided data from 15,000 tumor samples to over 100 genetics companies to help with diagnoses and to ensure patients receive the correct prescriptions. As the middle class is growing in China, so is the market for genomic tests.

Source: Nature