Public support for personalized and precision medicine (PM) is running ahead of the health care industry’s plans to develop and implement PMbased clinical strategies. At least that is the conventional thinking, supported by two recent studies. (See "Public Ahead of Providers in Support of Personalized Medicine," Diagnostic Testing & Emerging Technologies, Oct. 26, 2016, for details on the study findings.) But based on the deals we are seeing, the theory that the industry is dragging its feet on PM simply does not hold up—at least within the diagnostics realm. And it is not just startups and research institutions. Now the giant labs are stepping up and launching actionable PM clinical solutions. Quest Diagnostics has been among the most active on this front. Last month, Quest made national headlines by partnering with IBM Watson Health to launch a new precision medicine service combining genomic tumor sequencing with cognitive computing. (See Diagnostic Testing & Emerging Technologies, May 11, 2015, for more about IBM’s Watson and genomic analysis for cancer care.) On Nov. 21, Quest announced another PM blockbuster: QuestDirect, a pilot service in Colorado and Missouri that allows patients to order certain lab tests without a physician’s order by downloading a special […]