In 2005, an idea surfaced to provide each and every child around the world with a cheap laptop. Since 2007 the One Laptop Per Child initiative, or OLPC, has distributed more than 2 million laptops to children across the globe, despite some hiccups and complaints.

OLPC is a nice initiative to consider around the holidays, but its one-laptop-per-person angle harkens to an even more aggressive initiative: to create one computer per cell in everyone’s body. And this initiative connects to financial services, as I’ll explain below.

In last week’s New York Times, Drew Endy, a bioengineering professor at Stanford University, explained how each cell in a person’s body might one day have a computer:

What if … computers were used to keep track of how many times each of your cells divided, forming the basis of systems that could track and control aging, development and cancer? If too many divisions are detected, programmed cell death could be set off before a tumor had a chance to form.

Such computers would have incredible value for basic research and medical biotechnology. But note that these computers would derive all their value from being able to connect with and compute inside living cells, a place that no silicon-based computer can now operate.

So would it be possible to build simple computers that operate inside living cells or other new places? Yes — though in the case of biology, such computers would most likely need to be engineered from biological molecules. …

For example, digital information can be stored inside cells by flipping DNA sequences back and forth or by controlling protein levels and locations. In more detail, a DNA sequence that can be switched between two possible orientations can be used to represent and store “0” in one orientation and “1” in the other, which taken together represent one bit.

How fascinating! The idea that science could “get inside” you to the cell level to understand your health – or lack thereof – seems like the stuff of science fiction, but it is possible, and it holds great potential.

I thought about this as it relates to financial services. Is there a similar way to “get inside” a consumer’s personal finances to understand that consumer’s financial health – or lack thereof? I think the answer is yes, and these insights boil down to the notion of “probability.”

PFMs already consolidate a consumer’s personal financial information, the equivalent of the “personal finance cells” of a consumer. From there, a PFM – and by “PFM” I mean the operator of the PFM application, which could be a bank or credit union, not just PFM-only service providers – can gauge the probability that certain actions by the consumer will be “financially cancerous.” For example, say the consumer is in a Starbucks considering a double-no-foam vente latte. The PFM could inform the consumer right there in the store that buying the vente latte would not be fiscally responsible, and that a grande would be more prudent – that buying the vente latte would “probably” hurt the consumer’s personal finances. Perhaps the consumer might receive a message that reads, “Buy that vente Starbucks coffee and the probability that you will retire with $1 million goes down to 10%.”

Mint.com does a bit of this already. Mint will notify a consumer that a mortgage refinancing would save her $500 a month, but Mint is just churning up leads, and the benefit is delineated in a cursory manner. Adaptu is another PFM provider that actually predicts users’ future cash flows, but I envision involving far deeper probability. In other words, what does that $500 of savings do for the consumer’s personal finances over five years? Over 10 years? What does the $500 do to the consumer’s credit score or to previously spelled out financial goals? Only by burrowing deeper to the “DNA” level of personal finance can consumers truly understand just how financially “healthy” or “unhealthy” are they.

Of course, this type of deep advice to consumers becomes more feasible via mobile device. The mobile device creates a kind of real-time dynamic that until now financial institutions have been shut out of. And FIs should embrace this opportunity. FIs must dispense with the notion that they are stewards of consumers’ money. Rather, FIs must understand that they are stewards of consumers’ personal finances. There is a substantial difference between protecting a consumer’s money and protecting his financial future, and the sooner FIs understand that difference, the sooner everyone – consumers, FIs, and even consumer advocates – will be the better for it.