An archway of blue and white balloons adorned the entrance of an otherwise unremarkable office building in San Jose this week, marking the grand opening of a new high-tech laboratory for Kaiser Permanente Northern California, which serves 4.5 million people in the region.

The new lab is an effort to expand and streamline some common genetic testing routinely done by the insurer and health care provider, and a step towards increasing access to one of the next frontiers in tech and medicine, personalised “precision” treatment based on genome testing.