To scientists like Michael Snyder, chair of the genetics department at Stanford University, the future of medicine is data — lots and lots of data.

He and others predict that one day doctors won’t just take your blood pressure and check your temperature. They will scrutinize your genome for risk factors and track tens of thousands of molecules active in your body.

By doing so, the doctors of the future will identify diseases, and treat them, long before symptoms appear.

The approach has a number of critics, who say it will never be cost-effective and will instead lead to wild overtreatment of anxious patients.