Elizabeth Holmes Mission | Full Interview Fortune MPW

Elizabeth and I are color coordinated today um how many of you have heard of Theos raise your hand okay quite a bit well until we put Elizabeth on our cover just a few months back I hadn't heard of you I hadn't heard of the company and yet you're in my backyard in paloalto um company is valued at over9 billion do you've got over 500 employees I think um 700 700 now okay growing fast um and you have huge broad Ambitions can you tell us who you are and what you do what your company does sure um over the last 11 years we've reinvented the traditional laboratory infrastructure with a mission to make early diagnosis and early detection a reality in the context of our Health Care system and Health Care Systems throughout the world and as we thought about this we focused very much on the question of access to actionable health information because laboratory data drives 80% of clinical decisions yet it's not accessible to every person and it's not accessible at the time it matters so we delve into why um in our country 40 to 60% of people are not compliant with a requisition to go get a lab test done when given to them by a physician and part of that is because of fear of needles people don't like big needles being stuck into their arm uh part of it you're one of those people right deeply so yes I uh that won't do it um part of it is because of cost um even if people are insured they can't afford the ability to get a test um part of it is because of convenience the need to have to leave work uh in order to be able to go get a test done and part of it is the speed or turnaround time of the data in the context of actually having access to that information at the time you're interacting with a physician and every time as opposed to having to go get a test done come back see your doctor go get another test done if something's out of range um so so the first thing we did was to uh make it possible for every Laboratory test to be run on a tiny droplet of blood so go through the whole list of all the tests that are run in a traditional lab and instead of requiring tubes coming from your arm make it possible to do the tests on Tiny drop droplet of blood that could be taken from a finger MH and how much blood are we talking about uh a few drops uh it's a little tube looks about that big you call a nanotainer right call a nanotainer cute yeah and uh very into miniature things but uh it it uh it eliminates the need uh for people to have needles stuck in the room and for cancer patients and elderly persons and little children uh this means a lot um we then said let's take these tests and make them accessible at prices that every person could afford so we started uh when we announced this commercial laboratory Service uh last winter at 50% off of Medicare reimbursement rates in terms of the way in which we're billing for these tests and we've since begun dropping that pricing to more than 90% off of Medicare reimbursement rates in key cases to make these tests accessible irrespective of what someone's deductibles are and so what that means is for example something like a complete cell blood count is accessible for $4 and that means people can begin to engage in the testing process and we've now begun rolling this out um we're in in over 40 locations in Arizona we build out what we call wellness centers which are physical spaces people can come to that have a totally different type of experience that that really engages people in the testing process um and we've we've publicly announced that we are um going to deploy nationally uh with Walgreens building these wellness centers inside uh all the Walgreens how many locations is that Walgreens has uh 8,100 across the country across the country which which is really important because it means you're in five miles of every person's home and going back every person every person living every americ well on average there um but uh but on average and and in Metropolitan service areas uh one mile of every person's home on average and so um so that that really begins to change the access question in in a fundamental how quickly can you get to that scale what's your plan well right now um we're focused on um our work in Arizona and beginning our work in California um the most important thing for us is ensuring store by store and person by person that the service we provide is excellent and so um we're pacing our growth around it however um going into 2015 uh we have plans to um follow Greg Wasson the Walgreens CEO calls it crawl walk run and we're we're leaving The Crawling phase now and so uh so the expansion is going to pick up so I actually last week went into the Walgreens in Palo Alto and had my my little finger prick uh blood test done and um I'm not going to share all the results with you but I got it within my cholesterol levels are good apparently um but uh got the results uh in less than 24 hours there's an app a Theos app that you can get on your phone which pulls up all the results I got an email from the doctor also um The Experience kind of end to end and the technology end to end is really different from walking into the center there's like calming music and you know like a water fountain or something um to the the mobile app and the cost and the access um can you talk about what what what the Innovations are with Theos because there's the technology itself how how can you do you know run all of these tests with such a small amount of blood and why hasn't anybody done this before um to the fact that you publish your cost true the fees for all of these tests online which is not the way Healthcare is done by the way um just talk about all the Innovations along the the way sure so our our our belief fundamentally is that the answer to our challenges in health care lies in engaging and empowering the individual and if we can connect with people so that they begin to understand that they have this basic human right to get access to information about their body that can change their life we can begin to engage people in the process of finding some of this information out in time to do something about it so we have exactly designed an end to-end solution which is geared toward being able to get people engaged um because engagement is the first step to knowledge which then often can facilitate Behavior change and we you know I I talk a lot about type two diabetes which in our country we have 80 million pre-diabetics 90% of whom uh don't know that they're pre-diabetic and all you need is a glucose test to begin to get them engaged and and type two diabetes can be reversible with behavior modification uh and changes in lifestyle and diet and exercise how much does a glucose test cost fairness it's it's probably um less than a dollar would be my guess so so the system was build these locations that people want to go to and are really nice and um engage them in the testing process we've exactly got spa music and waterfalls and you know virtual fish tanks and a lot of bamboo and um and people describe the uh the experience as fun right which are not words that you traditionally hear associated with lab testing and people are not normally walking out being like that was awesome you know so but but that has to happen because if we can turn it into something that that's cool and that people like doing then they'll begin to connect with it so so we started with those physical spaces um we then tried to design the process in such a way in which um it's as painless as possible and it's fast so you get in and out quickly um it's accessible late at night it's accessible on the weekends um and it is highly automated um to ensure the Integrity of the process and the Integrity of the data so that that data can be used in ways that are most meaningful in the context of the early detection Mission uh but also because it makes the experience in and of itself more accessible through our app which we've just launched the intent was help people begin to connect with with this information we know more about our credit cards than we do about our body and normally people see these lab reports and they look a little scary and they don't completely understand them so they don't they don't connect with it but it's highly useful information people should begin to understand because it'll change their life and and you talked a lot about the experience help us understand give us your Trade Secrets um help us understand how you are able to actually make this happen sure uh well part of the reason it took us so long is that we we went through the process of and by the way I should mention that Elizabeth started this company when she was 19 so yeah I noticed you didn't actually answer the question about who you are but we'll get to that yeah we went through redeveloping every test um that is run in a traditional laboratory to be able to operate on these tiny volumes of blood or or other fluids we do urine testing feces testing swabs um and all sorts of other fluids um and and went test by test to to be able to do that and then we had to redevelop the analytical systems to run those tests because traditionally uh very large tubes of blood are required uh in order to run these tests in traditional labs and different tu tubes of blood are required you need the green top and the purple top and the rainbow top and and all these other tops um and and then we we invested very heavily in software in the context of automating the traditional analytical process and importantly What's called the pre-analytical and postanalytical processes wherein humans are traditionally involved in doing things like manually handling samples uh centrifuging them leaving them on counters uh and that's where 93% of the error and variability is introduced so we we work to design a process that is highly automated to help to minimize that variability and and error and it's in then integrating that with the enden solution and and you referenced sort of the elements of the wellness center we've built for example software on the front end that allows us to do the first realtime electronic eligibility for lab testing so when someone walks in we can tell them right there before they choose to buy this service how much is it going to cost them this you know historically has been a service that you go do a test but you don't know whether you're going to get a bill in the mail for $300 three months later and and that matters a lot to a lot of people so so we've we've built additional services around this to begin to engage people and create that transparency as a as a vehicle for for access um to testing okay um I want to open up to questions in just a a minute or two but before I do that um you have had just a really interesting trajectory with this company um you were very secretive for a long time but um one of the things that you've done is put together this amazing board and I just want to highlight some of the folks that you have on the board I can't even call them folks um so it includes three former US cabinet secretaries two former US Senators a retired Navy Admiral and a retired Marine Corps General um including George Schultz Henry Kissinger uh how did you make that happen you know um we I I started this company because I believe that um that nothing matters more than what people go through today when um when you lose someone you love because you found out too late in the process to do something about it and this board is involved in this company because we have an opportunity to do good in the world and we have an opportunity by building a business as a vehicle for making a change in the world to help to shape our Health Care system and to shape it in such a way in which we Empower individuals to get access to information that that fundamentally means you don't have to say goodbye too soon right and so it's um so that that's that's why they're why they're part of this and and it's been an incredible privilege for me to to be able to learn um and be surrounded by that kind of wisdom because we we know one of the things that's so amazing about this country is that you can um you can build companies and leverage creativity and Innovation to make a change and and that can be done in our Health Care system and it can be done by outside the system in terms of engaging the individual and the consumer to facilitate that change and and that's what that's what that group and and what we're working to do is about so I I got to ask you though um because looking over the list um and these are just very fine men you know but uh you don't have any women yeah when are you going to have a woman on your Bo and you have a lot of women in the company I should say but none on the board well I I I hope I you and a bunch of old guys basically you know I um this is an area that's so important and and we've we've started we we have we're told one of the largest percentages in terms of Workforce of female engineers and scientists uh in the Bay Area and and they're all there because they're the best at what they do and I have the privilege of spending a lot of time with them talking about the fact that we have an opportunity to show to their little girls that absolutely you can go into engineering you can go into science and you can be successful and you can build a family and and we should be doing this um so having women involved with this company and building this company and leading this company because of who they are especially in the engineering and science space I mean I was the only woman in chemical engineering at Stanford and in the electrical engineering program that I was at at Stanford and that must change um so well if you are looking for a female board member I hear Melinda Gates is in the audience do we uh do we have a a question appreciate um one over here hi there my name is Andrea sturmer from zerk insurance um I really admire what you do it is a phenomenal achievement where you are today and with the Innovation you've brought you were talking about um bringing that to Consumers and people here in this country but obviously we heard from Melinda Gates just before you came in and the connection is so obvious yes so there is such potential in what you do and how do you think about that outside of this country it it is at the heart of why we're doing everything that we do every single day um what's amazing about the opportunity to apply this internationally is that in many countries we we use the analogy to the lack of landline infrastructure in China and the existence of cell phones sort of leapfrogging over it the creation of a decentralized testing infrastructure because laboratory data drives 80% of clinical decisions can be a tool for facilitating a decentralized care delivery infrastructure and you we as a company do all of our manufacturing here in the United States we know we can compete on cost internationally and we can apply that toward being able to make this type of testing accessible for you know the types of prices that matter in those environments I mean you often you think about something like tuberculosis a $10 test is too expensive um so being able to operate in that realm in those countries is um is at the core of what we're doing and um and we're starting to get involved in that thank you um unfortunately we are out of time I'm sure there are more questions for Elizabeth I encourage you to talk to her afterwards um but thank you so much really appreciate so you stepping down this way I'm going over all right um

Channel: Fortune Magazine

Views: 538,802

Keywords: elizabeth holmes, Entrepreneur (Profession), Fortune (Magazine), self-made billionaire, Fortune Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs, fortune most powerful women, #fortuneMPW, most powerful women summit, Fortune, Fortune Magazine, business, management, energy, international, small business, Business tech, technology, discussion, fortune, startup, ideas, culture, company, software

Id: YecjzEScXqU

Length: 19min 44sec (1184 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 08 2014