Over the past years silicon photonics has become a game-changing technology for high speed transceiver products in telecommunication and datacommunication. It builds on the technological legacy of the CMOS-world to enable datalinks at 100 Gb/s and beyond. But the application of the technology in sensing and life science may have an even larger impact in the future. In this talk the field will be introduced and a variety of examples will be given, both in datacom and in lice science.dmap.