Illumina presented at the Goldman Sachs 34th Annual Global Healthcare Conference June 12th, 2013. Here are the highlights on the future direction of Illumina, as stated by CEO Jason Flatley. For the entire unabridged version, please visit www.seekingalpha.com.

1. On future product requirements: “Well, it certainly needs to be very easy to use. It needs to be deployable, probably on multiple platforms so that you can address both the centralized lab requirements in some geographies but also the more fragmented labs in other geographies…It needs to be a product that has very automated software associated with it and ultimately, one that could be sold into the hospital setting.”
2. On the direction of BaseSpace: “BaseSpace is strategically very important for us, not only the ability to create this initial killer app in data sharing but in the long run, the whole idea of the App Store and the ability to sort of capture the customer imagination and have one single place where customers can go to run a broad suite of different applications, whether they come from us or from other software suppliers. And that will create a level of convenience for our customers, I think, that will be unprecedented.”
3. On whether the future is in gene panels or whole genome: “Well, we think there’s going to be a market for both for some time, but we think the world will move to full genome sequencing as prices continue to come down. There’s really 2 reasons why people might not do that today and certainly, price is one of them. The second certainly has to do with sort of discoveries that are unintended, so unreportable results. And what you do is discoveries that happen that were not in parts of the genes that you cared about. And that’s a big concern for people in the ethical side about what you do with those pieces of data.”
4. On third generation technologies: “We think they’re still ways away from the market. It’s a very difficult — particularly nanopore is a very difficult technology to get to work robustly. And I think that’s been shown by how long it’s taken Oxford to get their products into the marketplace. And certainly, we’re making great progress in our labs, but we think it’s some years away from being commercially available.”
5. On sample prep: “We think there’s a tremendous amount of additional work we can do to improve the technology in Sample Prep to make it simpler for our customers, more automated, more LIMS enabled. And I’d say we’re just really getting started in the Sample Prep around, if you fast-forward 3 to 5 years, you’re going to see sequencing be much more integrated operationally than what you see today.”

The overarching theme in this transcript in full is that Illumina next generation sequencing should become more automated and focused around providing customers with a more simple, integrated experience.