We are delighted to introduce readers to the inaugural issue of Health Affairs Scholar: Emerging and Global Health Policy (HAS). HAS is the new fully open access companion journal to Health Affairs. Building on Health Affairs reputation as the leading journal of health policy thought and research, HAS serves as an additional forum for high-quality, peer-reviewed work from researchers worldwide. The journal fills a gap by focusing on both health policy and emerging issues that are historically less often addressed in legacy health policy journals. HAS will elevate emerging new research and policy analysis on healthcare technology, business models, and innovation; population health; global health policy; and important intersecting topics with health, such as the impact of climate change. The journal will also cover core health policy topics of healthcare costs, access to care, quality, and equity.

The market for next-generation sequencing technologies (NGS) has grown dramatically. Health care decision-makers need empirical evidence on market growth and future trends in order to develop appropriate strategies and policies, but little has been published about the nature and size of these trends. We provide a snapshot of market trends through 2020. We found rapid growth of clinical NGS - the global clinical NGS services market was $2.2 billion in 2015 and is forecast to reach $7.7 billion by 2020. The reproductive health NGS test market is the largest market followed by the oncology NGS test market. The largest market is for tests that sequence >50 genes but not the entire exome or genome. Markets are growing rapidly in countries outside of the US. Despite rapid NGS test growth, there are a number of key issues that will need to be addressed to facilitate appropriate future growth.

There is interest in making health care price information more transparent given the increase in enrollment in high-deductible and consumer-directed health plans, and as policy efforts intensify to engage consumers to obtain high value care. We examine the role of private companies that market price transparency tools, primarily to self-insured employers - an important yet understudied topic. What companies exist? How did they emerge? What information do they provide? Where do they get that information? How does the price and quality information provided compare across companies?

Precision medicine is making an impact on patients, health care delivery systems, and research participants in ways that were only imagined fifteen years ago when the human genome was first sequenced. Discovery of disease-causing and drug-response genetic variants has accelerated, while adoption into clinical medicine has lagged. We define precision medicine and the stakeholder community required to enable its integration into research and health care. We explore the intersection of data science, analytics, and precision medicine in the formation of health systems that carry out research in the context of clinical care and that optimize the tools and information used to deliver improved patient outcomes. We provide examples of real-world impact and conclude with a policy and economic agenda necessary for the adoption of this new paradigm of health care both in the United States and globally.

Precision medicine is making an impact on patients, health care delivery systems, and research participants in ways that were only imagined fifteen years ago when the human genome was first sequenced. Discovery of disease-causing and drug-response genetic variants has accelerated, while adoption into clinical medicine has lagged. We define precision medicine and the stakeholder community required to enable its integration into research and health care. We explore the intersection of data science, analytics, and precision medicine in the formation of health systems that carry out research in the context of clinical care and that optimize the tools and information used to deliver improved patient outcomes. We provide examples of real-world impact and conclude with a policy and economic agenda necessary for the adoption of this new paradigm of health care both in the United States and globally.