Running Through Walls: Genetic Truths, No Veneers
Anne Wojcicki’s passion for empowering consumers to take control of their healthcare goes all the way back to her days on Wall Street, as a healthcare investment analyst. When she went to medical investment meetings, “everything looked pretty — all the advertisements for cancer drugs,” she recalls. But when she worked part-time at Bellevue Hospital and San Francisco General Hospital, she saw the impact of the healthcare industry’s marketing power: “You see what it’s like for people with cancer getting a chemotherapy agent — people in misery and pain,” Wojcicki says. “There was this disconnect of people selling you something rosy and pretty, when the reality was not the case.”
Wojcicki founded 23andMe, the genetic testing and analysis company, to help healthcare consumers understand the genetic traits that could indicate their future well-being, or tell them if they’re carriers for certain health conditions. Armed with such information, Wojcicki hopes, consumers can become better informed and ask more focused questions of their healthcare providers.
“I find it wildly insulting that the consumer does not have a voice in their healthcare,” Wojcicki says. “There’s a three trillion-dollar industry hovering above you, making decisions for you — and no transparency on how decisions are made.” 23andMe’s genetic testing kits offer health and wellness reports based on simple DNA testing using saliva samples — at under $200, an easy way for consumers to gain insights on their health, without waiting for medical professionals to approve such tests.
Wojcicki is banking on consumer-driven healthcare to capture the attention of people who crave knowledge about their well-being. “We believe so strongly that we are on the right side of healthcare,” she says. She’s been inspired by the consumer-focused healthcare systems she’s seen in countries like India and Brazil, where clinics offer MRIs for just a couple of hundred dollars, compared to thousands in the United States. “You can cut out the middleman in business, and make it better for consumers and providers,” Wojcicki points out.
Beyond learning about genetic risks, Wojcicki also sees great market potential in 23andMe’s ancestry kits, which compares a consumer’s DNA to that of different populations worldwide, highlighting where one’s ancestors lived, and how their DNA compares to that of their relatives. “It’s that sense of discovery — they love finding out where they come from in the world,” she says of 23andMe’s ancestry kit users.
As more and more consumers choose to test their DNA and share results with researchers, 23andMe is well-positioned to contribute to future research breakthroughs. “We have over 400 million answers from our customers,” Wojcicki says. In fact, those responses contributed to a recent study on genetic markers associated with depression, backed by 23andMe data from customers as well as their responses to online surveys. “You can’t just have research in the thousands of people — you need hundreds of thousands of people,” Wojcicki says. “If we have a group of individuals who are engaged, they can contribute to all different kinds of research studies.”
