One of the most important applications has been for cancer research. In a nutshell, the tumor and normal cell genomes of a patient are sequenced to determine their differences. Most differences are incidental, but a small number will undoubtedly be "cancer drivers", but it is not easy to identify these. When this process is carried out for a sufficient number of patients for a specific cancer type, one starts to notice patterns that signal the identities of driver mutations. The following wikipedia article has much more information: