BRAVE
NEW WORLD
Known in-house as “The Rocket Ship,” the mostly privately
funded project aims to link supercomputers, super-fast data networks; personal monitoring devices; wired hospitals, clinics and
phones; nanotechnology; and genome and molecular “proteomic”
sampling into a system that can
provide individually tailored wellness care and cancer therapy at
affordable prices.
So far, Soon-Shiong tells me,
he has poured $800 million into
60 companies, university research
HUFFINGTON
12.22.13
programs and his own “do tanks”
— all under the aegis of a company
he calls Nantworks, in honor of the
nanotechnology he used to create
a breakthrough cancer drug.
The son of Chinese émigrés who
originally settled in South Africa,
Soon-Shiong isn’t the first corporate buccaneer to have had such a
vision, nor is he the only one now.
The founders of Netscape and
AOL were early movers, and now
everyone from drug companies to
telecommunications giants want
in on the action. Universities,
seeking both pure research triumphs and business for their hospitals, are working hard on pieces
Dr. Patrick
SoonShiong, 61, is
attempting
to develop
a digitally
enabled,
personalized
health care
system.