Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and
Speaker 1: Jason Kelly on Bloomberg Radio. Yeah, we want to talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about healthcare, um, medical treatments, and genetic testing,
Speaker 1: because genetics and genetic testing are already changing medicine and
Speaker 1: healthcare approaches, certainly changing it as we've known it. Our
Speaker 1: next guest has some thoughts on the next era of
Speaker 1: genetic testing. Sean George is CEO of in Vita, joining
Speaker 1: us on the phone from San Francisco. So, Sean, first
Speaker 1: of all, I've been checking out your website. My co
Speaker 1: host been Signorala doing the same thing. And tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about what you guys do specifically. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So we have a sample to answer process that at
Speaker 1: its at its core level, answer the question, can we
Speaker 1: explain uh, you know, uh in a family history of
Speaker 1: of of disease? Can we explain for any adividual symptoms
Speaker 1: or or problems are having with their health and then
Speaker 1: for a whole batch of other disorders, can we screen
Speaker 1: whether it's a woman thinking of having starting you know,
Speaker 1: starting a family or having a child, or at a
Speaker 1: population level, uh, screen for disease that will cause negative outcomes?
Speaker 1: Increase healthcare costs UH and all across the board, across
Speaker 1: all disease areas, across all stages in life. We have
Speaker 1: been building a company to bring genetic information into mainstream
Speaker 1: medical care for the roughly two billion people on the
Speaker 1: planet in modern modern economies that we think can use
Speaker 1: it all. Right, so you need the genetic information right
Speaker 1: to do something with it. So tell me how it works.
Speaker 1: Are you at this point, you know, just bringing in
Speaker 1: patients and gathering their genetic information and then applying it
Speaker 1: to treatment. Help me make that that that jump here.
Speaker 1: So are our customers are typically seeing a clinician, whether
Speaker 1: it's a disease area that is affecting their family or
Speaker 1: for for which the symptoms that are presenting indicate, or
Speaker 1: for example, a lot of our customers are women who
Speaker 1: are visiting their obi and either newly pregnant or thinking
Speaker 1: about starting a family. And those are the points in
Speaker 1: life when the question comes to very you know, it
Speaker 1: could could anything here be explained by genetics? Is there
Speaker 1: anything that we can do by way of prevention delaying
Speaker 1: the onset of disease? Um you know, decisions to avoid
Speaker 1: one way or the other, or therapeutic decisions to treat
Speaker 1: these disorders and those that's the type of information we
Speaker 1: provide for the patient, our customers themselves, and the clinicians
Speaker 1: who are caring for them. So how accurate are the tests?
Speaker 1: I mean if you say to someone, um, you you're
Speaker 1: you have the propensity or or a higher percentage to
Speaker 1: to to have a down syndrome child, just say, for instance, UM,
Speaker 1: and they choose not to have children or abort the child. Um,
Speaker 1: what what type of accuracy rate do you put to
Speaker 1: that type of superstantial decision? Right, So across our menu,
Speaker 1: whether it's cancer, cardiovascular disorders, pediatric neurology, or as you
Speaker 1: as you point out a lot of the reproductive health
Speaker 1: testing and screening. Uh, you know, our accuracy is the
Speaker 1: best in class medical genetics than the you know, it's measured.
Speaker 1: There's a handful of statistics that our clients really pay
Speaker 1: attention to, sensitivity specificity, positive predicted value, negative predicted value,
Speaker 1: and on those measures, our tests are world class, highest grade,
Speaker 1: trusted by key opinion leaders, and genetics across all all
Speaker 1: all disciplines and all disease areas well. And you know,
Speaker 1: you know, showing the debate that's out there First of all,
Speaker 1: you know, you're giving up your genetic makeup. That's a
Speaker 1: lot of personal information, and I do think there's a
Speaker 1: security aspect to it. But I do wonder, you know,
Speaker 1: are we getting to the stage where everybody's going to
Speaker 1: be genetically mapped and it's going to say, okay, you
Speaker 1: have a propensity for X, Y, and Z. I mean,
Speaker 1: is that kind of where things are going? And does
Speaker 1: it ultimately lead to better healthcare, treatment, medical care and
Speaker 1: longevity for individuals or are their false positives that might
Speaker 1: create I don't know, stress that doesn't need to be there.
Speaker 1: So the short answer to both of those is yes.
Speaker 1: Also the first the first ndoubtedly, undoubtedly genetics. Genetics has
Speaker 1: a far larger impact on the health of an individual
Speaker 1: and their senate family and the population than is currently
Speaker 1: being practice in medicine today. Um. You know, this is
Speaker 1: just math. We know the uh the degree to which
Speaker 1: these genetic this genetic variation of flicks of population uh
Speaker 1: it the impact is very large. And by bringing this
Speaker 1: information about, you know, we've we've we've spent the last
Speaker 1: ten years lowering the costs of this information and increasing
Speaker 1: the access to it, the ease of use and in
Speaker 1: doing so, we think we can bring this information into
Speaker 1: mainstream medical care, which will no doubt improve outcomes and
Speaker 1: lower costs. UH. To your second point, you do have
Speaker 1: have to do it. You do have to do it
Speaker 1: in a medically responsible way. UH. This is information that
Speaker 1: no matter what the reason is for an individual seeking
Speaker 1: the information, once you have information that confers a significantly
Speaker 1: high risk of some disorder, UM, your next steps will
Speaker 1: be medical in nature. You will be in the medical continuum.
Speaker 1: You will be asking questions about insurance reimbursement or who's
Speaker 1: gonna pay for downstream treatment? And that's why you know
Speaker 1: it's we we believe it's essential to approach this from
Speaker 1: medical perspective. As we have the last ten years, we've
Speaker 1: built what I believe can be said as the number
Speaker 1: one brand in genetics in the healthcare continuum. And and
Speaker 1: to the extent of the data, privacy is a question.
Speaker 1: This is where you know, in in that context, this
Speaker 1: is like any other visit to your doctor. UH. You know,
Speaker 1: we are HIPO covered entity. The information is being generated
Speaker 1: as it is on a CT scan or an ultrasound
Speaker 1: or any other lab test, and that information is protected
Speaker 1: by hip HOP. Uh. It's used in confidential, in confidence
Speaker 1: for the to the benefit of the patient uh and
Speaker 1: and in specifically at in vita, as we think about
Speaker 1: moving the entire genetic testing industry forward to one away
Speaker 1: from test by test, sample by sample, indication by indication,
Speaker 1: to one of genetic information used in the background for
Speaker 1: patient's behalf. Founding principle of companies that patients own and
Speaker 1: control their data. And so in addition to all of
Speaker 1: the regulations that control you know, that cover medical providers
Speaker 1: that we comply with, we in addition have as a
Speaker 1: as a foundational concept that we only take that data
Speaker 1: and send it to ecosystem players at the behest of
Speaker 1: the patient and the explicit consent of the patient for
Speaker 1: their behalf. So I can see where you say, a
Speaker 1: large part of your your clients of women obviously in
Speaker 1: the reproductive field and perhaps evens um you know the
Speaker 1: genetics behind breast cancer for instance, UM, but for other
Speaker 1: things like you know, for men, for instance, trying to
Speaker 1: track some sort of cancer that may be hereditary in
Speaker 1: the family. You know, can that information really help? I mean,
Speaker 1: if you tell someone that you know you are prone
Speaker 1: to a particular cancer, you know, what could you really
Speaker 1: do to prevent it, and just got about thirty seconds
Speaker 1: forgive me go ahead. Absolutely. The short answer to that
Speaker 1: is yes, absolutely. I'll give you one quick example, prostate cancer.
Speaker 1: Men with prostate cancer could benefit from having their genetic
Speaker 1: information known where the leaders and prosect cancer sent. I
Speaker 1: can tell you very few men get that information used
Speaker 1: on their behalf. And what happens is you can prognosticate
Speaker 1: different outcomes, how metastatic the cancer will be, how aggressive
Speaker 1: the treatment and monitoring should be, and in some cases
Speaker 1: point to specific therapies that can have greater effects. Well,
Speaker 1: very very interesting. Keep us posted on the work that
Speaker 1: you're doing, because some I do think we talked about
Speaker 1: medical industry really is the one that is the latest
Speaker 1: to be disrupted. But we're starting to see a pickup
Speaker 1: in some of the activity. Sean George, Sean George, excuse me,
Speaker 1: CEO at in Vita on the phone from San Francisco.
Speaker 1: That's stock by the way up about here in