CHM Revolutionaries: Theranos Founder & CEO Elizabeth Holmes in Conversation with Michael Krasny

tonight on revolutionaries to me there was nothing more valuable than being able to change the reality in our world which is that all too often people we love are lost because you find out too late in the disease progression process to be able to do anything about it Elizabeth Holmes dropped out of Stanford at 19 to start a biotech company today that company Thera knows is worth billions and still under the radar meet this groundbreaking scientist and founder Elizabeth Holmes in conversation with KQED z-- Michael Krasny major funding for revolutionaries is provided by the Intel Corporation well thank you all for that warm welcome and let me tell you how pleased I am to be here with Elizabeth Holmes been an admirer from afar and must tell you that she's a recent recipient of the Horatio Alger award which in some ways is appropriate that's a kind of Horatio Alger story which I hope I'll be able to flesh out in our conversation also I believe her brother is here and her mentor professor Robertson is here could they be just a signal where they are may come up in the course of conversation as well so just wanted to formally welcome them and welcome you Elizabeth congratulations on the Horatio Alger award thank you it's wonderful to be here well let's talk about how you got to be here or where you are if we go back I think we have to look at your lineage initially because your great-grandfather was an inspiration your parents were inspirations I mean this whole vision of yours and making a difference and doing the kinds of things that you're now doing a really revolutionize health care go back in a sense to childhood into really your genealogy in many ways well I I grew up in a in a family that was very focused on on the belief that we're all here for for a reason and we're here to try to make this world a better place and that and that we have a purpose and for me I I thought I was going to do what what my dad did which was work in disaster relief because I I grew up in a house in which I was surrounded by pictures of him helping people all over the world when when really bad things happens and and over time I I started to see business as a vehicle for making a change in the world because you have total control over what you decide to do and how you decide to do it whereas you know sometimes people who work in in public policy aren't able to fully influenced all the things they want to do or the changes they want to see and so from a pretty early age I started thinking about about that path I talk about early age this is many of you know I'm a literature professor in the sea young lady who read the whole of Herman Melville's moby-dick at the age of nine which in itself is a pretty colossal feat so there was something stirring in you even earlier on and as I understand it I still won't get into too much literature because we're both fans of Jane Austen I said we could do a whole hour just in conversation yeah but when you went off to school your dad gave you Marcus Aurelius this is the last mention perhaps of something in the realm of books but it had an effect and at that point I believe you had already started dealing with Chinese universities you had as a high school student you were fluent in Mandarin at that point all of that kind of well call it motivation because that's really what it is was was really pretty much visiting you at that point absolutely I mean I think I think that that focus on on a life of purpose that I'm struck me very deeply and and everything that we do now and the way we've done it the way we've built it has been about that you know you were drawn to medicine but then I guess you realized as a kid I'm sorry to tell about your trepidations here but you were terrified of getting blood drawn still am I'm still out yeah okay and and you said I mean you compared it to torture yeah you said that there's nothing else that you're afraid of really as much as you are afraid of getting blood drawn so this all seemed to converge in many ways really didn't it did you know when when I decided to start this company it was about understanding that laboratory information drives 80% of clinical decisions yet we know more about our credit cards than we do about our lab data and this information is instrumental in being able to see the onset of disease in time for therapy to be effective because so many of us when when I spent time thinking about you know what what is the most valuable thing that I could do with my life to me there was nothing more valuable than being able to change the reality in our world which is that all too often people we love are lost because you find out too late in the disease progression process to be able to do anything about it and the fact that making laboratory testing more accessible is a way to help change that and that is part of that we can get rid of the big bad needle yeah that that was sort of an added bonus yeah that's the icing on that cake but you know a lot of people have a lot of young people have these dreams these idealistic dreams and think I want to make a difference I want to do something that will contribute to humanity but you as a chemical engineering student realized to some extent you had to have a patent or two I mean that's where it all really began didn't it do you have to have I mean we believe you know here in Silicon Valley we're a product company we're a technology company you we believe very much in the ability to help contribute to solving policy issues through technology and through innovation and in this country has seen the benefits of that in terms of its impact economically and and otherwise the patent is a tool for being able to ensure that we do see this technology applied in such a way in which it does make that impact and and so that was that was one of the first steps in beginning to build our art portfolio but she would also have some experience again in China was working on SARS I did in in Singapore yeah and you had this professor whom I mentioned before professor Robertson who now is emeritus and now with your company yes and from my understanding you went to him and you said I'm ready to work with the PhD candidates Oh pretty much a freshman I mean not with that kind of egocentricity I didn't mean to suggest that but you were indeed ready to do that and we're pretty much shopping at the bit to get started so much so then you convinced in you were obviously convinced and had the conviction inwardly and they had the agency and so you move forward on this what about dropping out of school though I mean again you had your parents support they were pretty much behind you because they saw how purposeful you were really no I was you know I was very lucky and because they could have made that very difficult but you know they they'd saved their whole life for my brother and I to be able to go to college and they let me take that money that that otherwise would have been used for their retirement to put into starting this company and you mention you were Presidential Scholar also yeah yeah and I I found I found what I loved I found what I wanted to spend my life doing and so there was never sort of a plan to drop out of Stanford but I was I was spending all my time doing this and I still are I still have always will be but I'd learned I'd learned what I needed to learn to be able to do it and so so that was it so the adventure began and let's talk about everyone talk about the company and establishing it and so forth but before we get there what about the idea of because Peter Thiel has been an advocate as you probably know in Silicon Valley one of the founders of PayPal is almost 60 minutes piece on this as you know if you've got a bright idea an event of idea maybe you should not consider a liberal arts education I mean I don't think he was necessarily isolating science education zan you were studying chemical engineering but what about that idea because you know Zuckerberg didn't have a college degree and Bill Gates didn't have a college degree and Steve Jobs we keep hearing this do you feel that it's advisable for the women who have these kind of dreams or young men to give up college if they believe in themselves because you know you're pretty rare in terms of the success you've had in the mind you have you know I think it depends on on why they're considering pursuing whatever it is that they want to pursue and what they what they really want to do yeah we have phenomenal PhDs and scientists and our company who are changing the world and changing people's lives every day through what they do and their training and their experience and their research is being applied here in extremely powerful ways and if people want to start a company you know the first question that I always ask is why right what why why a company why not you know a research project and I think if if people really understand why they're doing it if there's a mission that they love so much that no matter how hard it is they want to keep doing it because they found what they love then absolutely but but sometimes I think people get a little excited about the concept of starting a company quote unquote and I think you know if that's something you really want to do then you need to really understand why you know because you're gonna be able to do a lot better at it it's you really had the convictions right from the get-go didn't you I mean you not only wanted to start a company you believed that you could start a company and really have it do the kinds of things that you wanted it to do this mission of helping people saving lives yeah I had the conviction that this is what I want to spend my life doing and if I had to start a company and fail a thousand times and start it over again and fail I would do that and so when when I realized that then then it was about doing whatever it takes to make this a reality because it's a change that can happen and has to happen in our world no regrets about missing homecoming dances and matters no although sometimes I wonder if I'm sort of frozen in time from back in those days but but no I mean I I am I feel like the luckiest person in the world because I get to live every single day knowing that even in a small way I've I've done something that's made someone's life better and I you know I had the chance to talk to people I was in Arizona on last Friday and listened to them about what this is me meant to them in terms of cancer patients and what they go through right now and how broken down they are and their families are by just the amount of blood that they have to give and and seeing someone so emotional and knowing that you've changed that I mean to me that's that's sort of life right yeah yeah and it didn't all start in a garage for you either than like it has for so many starting a basement oh yeah but you've been so devoted to this life of yours in this mission of yours that in many ways some you know your life is almost as I read it ascetic I mean monkish or something along those lines yeah I imagine you with your calendar of issues a vegan and all here in green concoctions and everything but just being at that job constantly that's pretty accurate you know I I wasn't always that way but it's it's evolved because it's a way to give more and more of yourself to to what it is that you love and and this is this is really hard and it's really big and it takes everything and I've tried to train myself to to live in such a way in which I can give my life to it well that's very noble and admirable let's talk about how it started though I mean talking it just briefly give us a sense of how you went out and raised this capital first of all I mean you had people like Larry Ellison and some of the venture behind you but also you know there was mention of your board which is an extrordinary board with some of the most prominent and just of two former secretaries of state actually George Shultz has had how many secretary cabinet positions for yeah but you know you have this all-star team behind you and so talk a bit about how those things will engender that is the capital on the one hand and the board on the well I think I'm you know when I first started raising money the question that was often asked when I walked in the room was what's your exit strategy and you know I'm sitting there kind of thinking about my entry strategy and so so I really tried to find people who had built great companies for the long term and really understood what that meant and and in our tradition Silicon Valley the whole venture capital business was started by people who were in it to invest in people who had great ideas and wanted to build great companies for the long term and so we turned down I'm the first monies that were offered to us I turned down I'm because I didn't think that they would invest in us for the reasons that I wanted them to and I'm and we were very lucky to end up finding a group of people who had personally been involved in building great companies for the long term and and got them involved in in this I'm and and likewise in the the board that we have the privilege of having is a group of people who really understand what it means to make a difference in the world and want to do good fundamentally that's why they're involved in this because they see it as something that does have the to change our healthcare system and apply technology to solving the policy issue which has very profound consequences at a macro level and so you know I've had the chance to get to know these people in different aspects of our work and we've been able to assemble just a brilliant group from a strategic perspective who can who can really sit down and think through what's the right way to do this and and how do we make sure we do it in a way that really does realize our mission somebody once said of you she's like a lot like Steve Jobs except she's got a much kinder heart I didn't mean to insult Steve Jobs but you know but the fact that matter is that in some ways he's been a model to you I know I mean even in the black attire and in many respects you're trying to do a lot of what he did but with heart and with a sense of compassion and it seems to me that what you really have in mind in many respects and tell me if I'm wrong barking up the wrong tree here but is a whole new concept of preventive medicine that's that's exactly right and I'm and I I'm a I'm a tremendous admirer of what what jobs did and I'm I think I think he was a genius in the context of his work I'm I do have to disclose that I've been in black turtlenecks since I was seven but you're reading Moby Dick and still wearing that you know that thanks to my mother but I got used to it um you know I think um I think that this question about preventive medicine is about the individual and it's about the consumer and there's this incredible opportunity that we have to connect and engage with individuals in such a way in which they can begin to love the products and services that result in changing their lives and this space this healthcare space has not been an area lab testing particularly that people love they they do not you know leave a lab visit saying you know that was awesome let's do it again and and they should because it's the first step in beginning to get information that changes their life and if they begin to understand that they can use this information when I talk all the time about type 2 diabetes which drives 20% of United States healthcare costs and is completely reversible through diet and exercise and lifestyle yet you're looking at a living we have there you go yeah I got the diagnosis I changed and brought the blood sugar down in every yeah but had to have those vials by the phlebotomist right right no exactly but there's there's 80 million Americans who are pre-diabetic 90% of them don't know that they are right and the point about that is when people begin to understand that when you see your lab values and you see you the lab values of people who ended up being really really sick it's a powerful moment in terms of behavior modification and that engagement in terms of a product in terms of a service in terms of this this legacy that we have in Silicon Valley of building great products that people love is a huge opportunity because we can create an experience that's wonderful that people do love and I think one of the things I'm most proud of with what we've done so far is that we get tons of emails from people saying this was so much fun and they want to go do it again right and the more we can change that paradigm the more we'll realize our mission one of it I don't know if the name Tom Ferguson is familiar at all to you but he was one of the pioneers in self-help medicine and so forth and a lot of that was geared toward preventive medicine and get many ways but what he never could have conceived of was what you have now with I mean well it isn't a vision to have like within a mile or within a few miles these kind of availabilities of testing I mean now you've got the Walmarts and that in itself you know it was quite an accomplishment to have but down the line we're talking global aren't we well it has huge implications at a global level because in so many of these countries in the same way in which the cellphone infrastructure leapfrogged over the lack of landline infrastructure there is no equivalent landline infrastructure in terms of traditional testing and so the opportunity to put a distributed or decentralized testing infrastructure in place is the opportunity to begin building a decentralized care delivery system and if we can do that then we can start changing people's lives in a very material way so it's it's an extremely important part of our mission and and likewise in in the US I mean I've had so many conversations with people who talk just about for example driving to the VA right the amount of distance that they have to travel to be able to do something like get a blood test done in order to be able to get the care they need is shocking what she's doing for the carbon footprint just alone yeah that's true and and so you know this this mission is about engagement it's about access the tiny samples a way to engage people and access the locations are a way to engage people and access and in the same way I mean people should be able to go get their blood tested on a Sunday night without going to an emergency room and they should be able to be able to do that on a Sunday morning and late at night after work during the week and so it's all part of engagement well on the key to the success I think on a number of occasions you said is inexpensive and transparency and actually the selling I'm promoting you here which I'm not because I want to get into some criticism and get you response to it but there's the there's the notion that that you want to work with the FDA I mean you said this on a number of occasions do you want regulation you welcome regulate yeah we do and I've had is seen by some as highly controversial and I'm but but the way that I've always looked at it is that we only realize our mission if the information that we generate is actionable and the information will only be actionable if it's of the highest levels of integrity and so to ensure that we've got to do a lot of work and spend a lot of money on a lot of clinical trials and if we're gonna do that why would we not submit and that bar I mean the reason that we want to work with FDA on this is that it's the it's the greatest stamp of quality that we can get in terms of demonstrating the integrity of what we do so it's extremely important to us and we're deeply committed to it and we're gonna do whatever it takes to make sure that we we create a model for that are you I want to talk about competition on a couple different levels MRIs and other things and technologies moving forward in a lot of different ways without necessarily taking any blood and how do you see that I mean with your periscope around the corner yeah I'm well I mean the legacy of Silicon Valley is about obsoleting yourself right and right and that's um that's something that we spend a lot of time on ourselves and and it's something that's really important to us in terms of how we have organized our company and I think that the potential of laboratory testing in the context of preventative medicine is is so transformative we don't even understand how transformative it is right now so for example we've done some work with people at Hopkins who have developed and demonstrated that blood you can see the onset of pancreatic cancer 17 years before a tumor forms right so you do not want to be figuring out that someone you love has cancer by imaging and seeing a tumor you want to see it 17 years before it shows up because that's when you have a shot at doing something about it and if we can through blood through lab testing make it possible to do that then we can realize this vision so so we're doubling down right now well good luck on that score and you're talking about pancreatic cancer made me think again of Steve Jobs who unfortunately succumb to that a rare form of it like there's also been a lot of concern about the trade secret issue with respect to your company I call it your company because it is 50 percent Jers our company okay well it's it has your name and your brand that is very humble of you but you know it has been associated with you and will continue to be I'm just wondering I mean with your leadership but I'm wondering about this sense of secretiveness and and all I know you've had some litigation and concern about trade secrets in any company to get started and get on the move has to be concerned with that but what about the accusation that things are just too secretive that you know you should be publishing more in peer-reviewed journals you should be talking more about your methods of technology these kinds of things ken auletta by the way wrote all about this and not a profile of Elizabeth in The New Yorker but how do you respond to them because it's critical we understand that our competition would like us to tell them how we do everything that we do but you know I've I've always believed we spent ten years in stealth mode we basically had nothing on our website we never did any interviews no press and we did that because we were creating something that has the potential to do what we're talking about right now and there was no reason us to talk about it until we've done it right and hyping this up does not serve any purpose right so there's a lot of companies that go out and they publish all this stuff because they're trying to show that they've got the next greatest thing and that's not relevant for us we're interested in serving people and serving physicians and so what's relevant there is FDA and the body called CLIA which regulates us and whereas traditional labs are very aggressively fighting FDA regulation and have not ever submitted any of their laboratory developed tests to FDA I'm we think it's really important and so so we're doing that and and we have we released our first publication this year but where we do a publication in our opinion it needs to be about something that people publish about no lab goes out there and does a publication saying my lab test works the regulator's make sure your lab test works what they do go out and publish is this test for example is predictive of this right so our first publication was on the ability to do this type of testing in patients who are septic in a hospital so when you're infected and you're bacterial it gets into your bloodstream there's a tremendous need for very rapid measurements to be able to figure out how to administer an antibiotic and that's what we published around spraying and so we'll keep doing that and I'm well we're going to keep doing that because it serves our mission in some way and and that that's what matters to us I'm sorry I just did a program some of the listeners I mean members of the audience may know on superbugs and resistance yeah antibiotics we don't necessarily need to go there but we go instead to the whole sense of running of business because there's a lot of problems obviously when you have people you have about 500 people I believe now and you know there's there's human error and there's all that difficult the all the draggy things about doing a business to you know deliveries and getting lab people to get the results out and all of those sorts of things I mean in many respects has that been a different kind of challenge for you and and maybe in some ways even more challenging because you mounted this with all of this passion and with all this commitment and purpose sense of purpose well we we have an extremely long term mindset and so I'm we've got we've got over 700 people now and we've designed our infrastructure differently because we're a technology company and so I'm in the same way in which we've seen software totally transform traditional businesses like retail for example were able to apply technology exactly to automate much of what was done manually in the past to mitigate human error and that's the premise around which we're building this company and that allows us to develop this infrastructure in such a way in which we can also price at incredibly low price points so that testing can become affordable so you know we said when we when we launched this consumer business for lack of a better word that we would pursue what the walgreens CEO calls a crawl walk run model and and we've been spending a lot of time in the crawl phase to make sure we really understand how to be excellent in all of those areas in in call center and the logistics because that is absolutely central to being able to realize our mission and so we're we're spending a lot of time on it and we we really leave in the power of technology in that context because fundamentally if you talk about a clinical analyzer that architecture has not changed since 1960 when Beckman Coulter here you know invented some of the first automated clinical analyzers so what do you envision moving along on the trajectory or on now in terms of the future of your company of the company I mean particularly in the sense of speeding up perhaps the pace I mean you're moving so quickly now but do you want to move it faster do you want to move it even less expensive you said a lot of these prices are incredibly inexpensive than they are compared to what's paid for Medicare or medical or yeah Hospital tests and so forth you want to keep getting as so many technologists have the prices even down lower absolutely we are spending a massive amount of resources and we we announced I'm when we started this work and I guess it was just about a year ago in in the consumer and physician space that we were gonna price our tests at less than 50 percent off of what Medicare and Medicaid are willing to pay so if they're saying you can send in a bill for $100 we're sending one in for 50 and I and we've since begun dropping the really important tests down to 90 percent off of their reimbursement rates and we think that's fundamental because no person should have to walk away from getting a medical service because they can't afford it and so we're gonna do whatever it takes so how does this tie in with the Affordable Care Act it's a complicated question you know I'm we just had testimony today from the MIT professor who spoke about the lack of intelligence of the American people so this is somewhat timely but yeah how do you how do you see a connecting testimony on the Capitol yeah I mean I I don't know what that that testimony was about I really believe in he said he was stupid okay he was stupid for calling American people stupid yeah no I mean I really believe in the intelligence of the American people I think that what we need to do in health care is empower the American people because they do care and if you educate them and you give them the tools I believe they will change whatever ways they can to help improve their own outcomes and so I'm the Affordable Care Act you know puts additional focus on quality and cost in the ways that that it was designed but fundamentally irrespective of policy or you know whatever systems are in place people care about saving money and hospital systems care about it insurance companies care about it people care about it because now even if they're insured what's happening is their deductibles are increasing at such a rate that they're still having to pay in the lab testing case often thousands of dollars out-of-pocket even though they have insurance and so I'm you know certainly the system will change because of it and I think everybody is still trying to understand exactly how but this work that we do we're lucky in that it's it's nonpartisan and it's really policy independent because these core tenets of cost savings and our mission of getting rid of the need for people to have to have big needles stuck in their arms holds true in terms of its relevance irrespective whatever the policy of the day is if that makes sense it makes sense and you mentioned the John Hopkins study about 17 years out with pancreatic cancer yeah there are other kinds of things down the line or that you foresee that people would want to know particularly in terms of diagnostic possibilities that research is you know you're leading to them I mean I I think I think what's so what's so powerful about it is that people people don't really understand it and because it's been such a such a controlled thing they've not engaged in it and and used it to try to help make their life better so I I also often talk about the fact that you know it's illegal here in California for me to order a lab test that would tell me if I have an allergy to a peanut and I can go buy a gun and I can kill myself but I can't order that lab test because you know I might stop eating peanuts and that would just be a big problem for society so I'm you know when you talk about a system where until earlier this year it was also illegal even if I got my physician to order that lab test for me in many states for me to get a copy of the results right of my own body I could I call the doctor's office say I want a copy in a lot of states in this country until there was a policy shift this year you could not retain your own copy of your own data about your own body and so I think the first most basic thing there is that when people to understand that you can get this information and that it's useful and and also that you can change it I mean your example about what you did in the context of your own health is exactly it because that's how so many of these diseases can help to be managed or reversed and and I think I think if we can create engagement around that then you know I certainly believe that that for time it will become more and more predictive but but it's life changing right even even at this this very basic level of the tests that are already out there right right now you have concerns about privacy though with respect to personal data or how do you protect that how do you particularly create security around that issue we're tremendously concerned about it and I we put you know in all of our documents and materials that we give to the people we serve that we will never sell their data period we will never advertise on it period and I and we heard that from Facebook I think - sorry we we really strongly believe that individuals own their own health information and if they tell us that they want it sent somewhere then we're gonna try to make sure every single time that they really want it sent somewhere until they tell us that they don't want us to keep asking them that they don't want to send it wherever they want to send it and time and that's the way we designed our whole system and you know I think that that's really fundamental in the context of health information because people don't understand what happens when it gets into the wrong hands and how it's used and so I'm so creating secure systems and distributed systems that can be designed for the sole purpose of protecting individuals information and giving them complete control over an incomplete transparency over it is is really really core to us we'll take questions from the audience but I'm just wondering if you could perhaps even more illuminating Lee and the conversation so far has been indeed quite enlightening but talk about what you see ahead for ther knows I mean just in terms of presenting this mission as you call it to not only a larger scale because that in itself is pretty formidable but take us through maybe how you envision the steps to get where you want to get I think I think it's about you know I mean fundamentally it's about ensuring that we do everything so that every person who comes to our locations and who we serve has a wonderful experience and a high integrity experience and we will scale around that right so we can't scale until we know that we've built a system that meets our expectations in terms of what we want to see with respect to quality of service with respect to providing a wonderful experience for people that changes their whole relationship with getting access to this information and that we'll realizes the levels of quality that that we're holding ourselves to I'm and if we can do that in one location and we can do it really really well then we can do it in another location and when we've met those standards there then we can do it in another location and that's that's how we think about it so we've been building a model in Arizona which allows us to understand the operational elements of this in detail and we will systematically replicate that in the next five years are about being able to ensure that we can bring that level of service and that level of excellence to every person in this country so you have Luanne's yeah absolutely yeah they're also what you know you've already become a model for so many young people and particularly young women do you say when especially young girls ask you you know how to chart their lives or how to blueprint their lives what you've learned from your own experiences it could be valuable let's say to young people who want to emulate you you know it's it is such an important area and if there is anything that I can do especially in in connecting with with little girls about the fact that you know we should be in science and technology and it is a cool thing to do and it's not hard and you can excel in it in the same way in which you can excel in so many of these other areas I had a conversation with the CEO of the Girl Scouts and she was telling me that they took all the valedictorians of their club their group and they sat them down in a room and they said raise your hand if you think you're gonna be a leader in technology business and none of them raised their hand and she said you know we were shocked these girls are valedictorians of their classes and they spent all this time looking at it and she said that they didn't have enough role models to be able to see themselves in those positions and and I've I've always believed that you know everywhere there's a glass ceiling there's an iron lady right underneath it and and the more that that we can demonstrate that I mean I I would never have been able to do what I've done and probably any other part of the world but in this country you can do this you can drop out of school as a 19 year old girl and and create something you know that starts with the dream and and becomes your product becomes a company and that's how we've built this country and so being able to communicate that it is possible and that it can be done you know I I think I think can't be done enough and and I I have the privilege now to start doing that in in some schools and and I will do everything that I can to to help help people see that because because it's real age and also to make science and math more accessible for young girls yeah absolutely I mean I was I was the only girl in in my electrical engineering classes at Stanford and a lot of my chemical engineering classes and that was not that long ago you know we have a number of people have questions for you let me just go to some of these and bring them in you could have chosen any path into personal health care why a blood test blood test because it it plays such a huge role in I'm in clinical decision-making right so 80% of clinical decisions are associated with laboratory data if you don't have the laboratory data you're gonna be very difficult time making an effective clinical decision when you talk about all your belief in technology and when you talk about saving people's lives and making sure that they live as long as they're supposed to it's just curious to know this may seem a little bit of an offbeat question but what you think about all this research that Ray Kurzweil and others are doing that keep extending longevity I think it's great let's say let's make it work I'm you know I think that I think that the human body is incredibly powerful and the more we understand it the more we can leverage it means so much so much of the research that's happening right now whether it's in cancer or other areas is about channeling your own immune system to be able to fight some of these diseases so I'm I think we're we're just at the beginning of of a massive revolution there there are some more questions somebody the audience says it's nice to have the raw data about my own blood but wouldn't I need a trained medical professional to tell me what it means and what actions to take remember 23andme I think you've said publicly on a number of occasions you don't mean to shut out the physicians here they are going to be an important part of you there they're a critical part and and we've built our whole infrastructure around is serving and engaging with physicians and I I think it's really important to separate the legal question of do I have a right to information about my body from what do I do with it because 40 to 60 percent of people in our country do not go get their tests done when they're given a requisition by a physician those but I've seen that figure number times he's 42 16 some disputed some it's more like 30 or do you know the source of that I do it's a study by Lewin that was published but it's also we've done we've done a ton of research on this because the people who come into our locations I'm a come in with years worth of lab requisitions right and so we say to him well why didn't my why not right and and it's because they couldn't afford it it's because they were terrified of needles and and other reasons and I'm so so if you can engage people if you can give them the right to begin getting tested the way that the physician can provide care is transformed because right now they're often providing that care with people who are not compliant with getting a lab test done and so you know we've we've built electronic systems and infrastructure to be able to get that data to physicians and to be able to engage people with their physicians but but getting them tested in the first place is is the first barrier that we're trying to help get over you've become at least on paper very wealthy as a result of this whole enterprise of yours and I know that must have brought some changes in your life it can't help but do that sort of thing I mean even there's a another Michael Krasny who started CDW computers who's a billionaire one of the richest men in the country and they had him in Forbes they had my picture so I know so in my own small way I've had to deal with this let go but in your case I get to feeling it tell me if I'm completely on the wrong track here and I'm gonna you know say this anyway because it may be in the wrong track maybe you've been a better than a pertinent question I get the feeling that the money isn't even that important to you know and and my life actually hasn't changed I mean my life is the same I'm still at the office seven days a week and you know that's that's what I do yeah I'm you know I I think what's changed is has absolutely nothing to do with with money it it's that we started talking about this mission I'm just over a year ago and and what's that what that's meant is that we we've had the opportunity to connect with people and and that's changed my life profoundly because because I've been able to see this applied in ways in which in which it touches and helps people at a very deep level and and if we can keep doing that and engaging with people then you would do this work even if you were getting modest rewards for what I did for ten years yeah absolutely gets as many questions as I can here for your questions for Elizabeth without FDA approval how do you launch at Walgreens and how much support or credibility do you have among medicine doctors so we're a certified lab I'm high complexity CLIA certified lab just like all the other labs and that provide lab testing and that means that we get audited on an ongoing basis and we do what's called proficiency testing which is where you're sent for example twenty blinded samples for every test that you run on an ongoing basis throughout the year and you have to get the right answer otherwise if you don't yeah over time you can lose your license yeah I'm and that's that's the laboratory framework today you know our our experience in working with the position community has been to say yes right test us use this let your parents have some experience with it compare it to the infrastructure that you're using and and that's worked pretty well and and we you know we have a we have a wealth of data we've been doing this for a long time in the context of building this company which which we engage in with with the physicians we serve all right actually I've got a I almost said a listener here well you are consider so again a period these conversations and I almost go on automatic pilot and say you could tweet us you can go to our Facebook page one more question from the audience are there applications specifically for the developing world yeah there's there's tremendous applications and that goes back to what we were talking about earlier in terms of in terms of the lack of infrastructure in so many of these countries and when you think about the pursuit of education or economic development in these areas I've I've had so much you know so many conversations with people who who are trying to for example pursue education in some of these areas and you can't you can't really do that successfully if you don't have basic health but there's no basic health infrastructure and if we can through our commitment to doing whatever it takes to drop the price of laboratory testing make it possible to take incredibly low cost tests into these areas so that people do have access to it then we can help to begin building that type of health infrastructure and we're we're really committed to that we're coming near the end of the time that we have what do you do for fun I do I do fair enough that's pretty much it you know my curiosity always serves me to to to at least try to find out a great deal about the people that I have the great privilege of being in conversation with and I also trust my instincts having at this stage of my career probably interviewed more people than most interviewers I must say you were an extraordinary woman and it's been an amazing young woman it's been a real pleasure to share the stage with you and want to thank everybody for your attention the technology behind Thera nose could put hundreds of medical tests as close as your fingertip there are hundreds of stories like this at the Computer History Museum join us next time for the Computer History Museum presents revolutionaries

Channel: Computer History Museum

Views: 10,928

Rating: 3.1981981 out of 5

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Id: LeA7rCvoyhU

Length: 54min 12sec (3252 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2015