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