Improving the Outcome

Your company Veracyte uses genomics to accurately identify patients who have benign tumors, that helps keep them out of surgery, because historically, the surgery suite is where a lot of those diagnoses are made. Additionally, your tests help guide treatment decisions, whether it's informing on what kind of surgery to perform, or whether a patient may benefit from a targeted drug. What would you say, as you work on all these things, what would you say is the greater purpose of your work, and where did that come from?

I think for years, and many of us talk about this, we hear about this on media, and anyone who has had to navigate the healthcare system, either themselves or with elderly parents or siblings, it is not an easy system to navigate. There is a lot of disconnects within the healthcare system. There aren't great screening tests that are able to roll out that someone has a disease with a high degree of accuracy until you get into the mix of being worked out for that suspicion disease. We know people, you know, lung cancer is one of the indications were in more people die every year of lung cancer than the next three cancers added together. And the reason for that is because we're not diagnosing the disease early enough. I know I've been touched by cancer with both my parents, my spouse, and almost everybody you've run into has been touched by cancer in some way. So when you can join a company and see the impact every day, every month, and every year that you're able to have on improving the outcome for a patient, helping them get to a better answer quicker, both in the diagnostic realm and then helping them get a better treatment decision faster so hopefully they will have a better outcome, it's inspiring. And we talk about those stories a lot, because it's when employees are inspired about what they do that they are more engaged and more focused on doing the work even better, doing it faster, working smarter, and then celebrating the successes along the way. And it's that work that allows a company like Veracyte to do what we're doing.