Name: Elizabeth Holmes Mission
Uploaded: 2019-12-18
Duration: 19 min 44 s
Description: The extraordinary entrepreneur on Fortune’s June cover explains her mission and opportunity ahead.

Elizabeth Holmes Mission 

Leadership

The extraordinary entrepreneur on Fortune’s June cover explains her mission and opportunity ahead.

Elizabeth and I are color coordinated today. Um, how many of you have heard of 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 Palo Alto. Company is valued at over $9 billion. You've got over 500 employees, I think. Um, 700. 700 now. Okay. Growing fast. And you have a huge broad ambitions. Can you tell us who you are and what you do? What your company does? Sure. Yeah. 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 system 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 every person and it's not accessible at the time it matters. So we delve into why in our country, 40 to 60% of people are not compliant with the 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 arms. Yeah, part of it. You're one of those people, right, people. I will do it. Part of it is because of cost. Even if people are insured, they can't afford the ability to get it. Part of it is because of convenience, the need to have toe leave work in order to be able to go get a test done. And part of it is the speed or turn around time of the data in the context of actually having access to that information at the time you're interacting with the position and every time, as opposed to having to go get a test done, come back to your doctor, go get another test done. If something's out of range, I'm so so. The first thing we did was to 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 running a traditional lab. And instead of requiring tubes coming from your arm, make it possible to do the test on tiny droplet of blood that could be taken from a finger. And how much blood are we talking about? A few drops. A little tube looks about that Big Helen, an entertainer entertainer and very into miniature things. But it it, uh, it eliminates the need now for people to have a little stuck in there and for cancer patients and elderly persons and little Children. Uh, this means a lot. We then said, Let's take these tests and make them accessible at prices that every person could afford. So we started when we announced this commercial laboratory service last winter at 50% off of Medicare reimbursement rates in terms of the way in which were building for these tests. And we've since begun dropping that praising to more than 90% off 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 sell. Blood count is accessible for $4 that means people can begin to engage in the testing process, and we've now begun rolling this out. I were in over 40 locations in Arizona. We build out what we call wellness centers, which are physical spaces. People can come to that have, ah, totally different type of experience that really engages people in the testing process. And we've publicly announced that we are going to deploy nationally with Walgreens. I'm building these wellness centers inside a Walgreens. So and how many locations is that Walgreens has 8100? Yeah, I'm 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, every American, on average, but but on average and in much Bolton service areas, uh, one mile of every person's home on average. And so, um, so that really begins to change the access question in a fundamental how quickly can you get to that scale? What's your plan? Well, right now I'm we're focused on our work in Arizona and beginning our work in California. I'm the most important thing for us is ensuring store by store and person by person. That service we provide is excellent. And so we're pacing our growth around it. However, I'm going into 2015. We have plans, too. On follow Greg. Boss in the walled Greene CEO called it Crawl, walk, run. And we're leaving the crawling phase now. So, uh, so the expansion's gonna pick up. So I actually last week, went into the Walgreens in Palo Alto and had my little finger prick blood tests done. And I'm not gonna share all the results with you, but I got my cholesterol levels are good, apparently, Um, but I got the results in less than 24 hours. There's an apple Theranos that you can get on your phone, which pulls up all the results. I got an email from the doctor. Also, the experience kind of ends and in the technology and is really different from walking into the centre. There's, like, calming music and, you know, like a water fountain or something to the mobile app and the cost. And actor, Can you talk about what? What what the innovations are with Tara knows. 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? To the fact that you publish your costs, the fees for all of these tests online, which is not the way health care is done, by the way. Just talk about all the innovations along the way. So are our our beliefs. Fundamentally, is that the answer to our challenges and healthcare 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 because engagement is the first step to knowledge which then often can facilitate behavior changed. I mean, I talked a lot about type two diabetes, which in our country we have 80 million pre diabetic, 90% of whom, uh, don't know that they're pre diabetic and all you need is a glucose to begin to get them engaged in Type two. Diabetes can be reversible with behavior modification on changes in lifestyle and diet and exercise with enough. It's probably less than a dollar, you know. So so the system that was build these locations that people want to go and are really nice, and I'm engaged them in the testing process. We've exactly got spot music and waterfalls and virtual fish tanks and a lot of bamboo. And and people describe the experience of fun are not words that you traditionally here associated with lab testing, and we're not normally walking out being like that was awesome, you know, But what 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. We then tried to design the process in such a way in which, uh, it's as painless as possible, and it's fast, so you get in and out quickly. It's accessible late at night. It's accessible on the weekends, and it is highly automated 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, but also because it makes the Syrians in and of itself, more accessible through our app, which we've just launched. The intent was help People begin to connect 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 your life. And you talked a lot about the experience. Help us understand. Give us your trade secrets. Help us understand how you are able to actually make this happen. Sir. Uh, part of the reason that circus so long is that we we went through the process of, by the way, I should mention that Elizabeth started this company when she was 19. E no, if you didn't actually answer the question about who you are, but we'll get to that. Uh, yeah, way went through redeveloping every test. I'm that is run in a traditional laboratory to be able to operate on these tiny volumes of blood or other fluids. We do urine testing, feces, testing slobs. I'm in all sorts of other fluids. I'm and and went test Thio be able to do that. And then we had to redevelop the analytical system to run those tests because traditionally, uh, very large tubes of blood are required in order to run. These tests in traditional labs and different to the blood are required. You need the green top in the purple top in the Rainbow Top and all these other tops. And and then we we invested very heavily and software in the context of automating the traditional analytical process. And importantly, what's called the pre analytical and post analytical process is where Inhumans are traditionally involved in doing things like manually handling samples, uh, centrifuge ing them, leaving them on counters. Uh, and that's where 93% of the error and variability is introduced. So way worked to design a process that is highly automated to help to minimize that variability and error. And it's been then integrating that with the end end solution and you reference sort of the elements of the wellness center. We've built, for example, software on the front end that allows us to do this first real time Elektronik 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 gonna cost? 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 $300.3 months later. And that matters a lot to a lot of people. So that we've built additional service is around this to begin to engage people and create that transparency is a vehicle for for access. Okay, I wanna open up to questions in just a minute or two. But before I do that, um, you have had just a really interesting trajectory with this company. You were very secretive for a long time, but 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 game called folks. So it includes three former U. S. Cabinet secretary, two former U. S. Senators, A retired Navy admiral, retired Marine Corps general. Um, including George Shultz. Henry Kissinger. Uh, how did you make that happen? You know, I'm wait. I started this company because I believe that, uh, that nothing matters more than what people go through today When when you lose someone you love because you found out too late in the process to do something about it and 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 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, and, uh, so that that's why they're why they're part of this. And it's been an incredible privilege for me Thio to be able to learn and be surrounded by that kind of wisdom because we we know from one of the things that's so amazing about this country that you can 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 in the consumer to facilitate that change. And and that's what that's what that group and what we're working to do is about. So I gotta ask you, though, because looking over the list there just very fine men, you know? But you don't have any women. Yeah. When are you going to have a woman on you? And you have a lot of women in the company, I should say, but none on the board. I hope you and a bunch of old guys I, um This is an area that's so important ends and we've We've started. We have. We're told one of the largest percentage is in terms of work, force of female engineers and planted 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, too. They're 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 we should be doing this on 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 based. I mean, I was the only woman in chemical engineering at Stanford in in the electrical engineering program that I was at Stanford and that most changed so well, if you are looking for a female board member, I hear Melinda Gates is an audience way. Have a question, um, one over here. Hi there. My name's Andrea Sturmer from Zurich Insurance. I really admire what you do. It is a phenomenal achievement where you are today and with the innovation you've brought, you're talking about bringing that to consumers at people here in this country. But overtly were heard from Melinda Gates just before you came in. And the connection is so obvious. So there is such potential and what you do. How do you think about that? Outside of this country? It is at the heart of why we're doing everything that we do every single day. And what's amazing about the opportunity to apply this internationally that in many countries we use the analogy to the lack of landline infrastructure in China and the existence of cellphone 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 and decentralized care delivery infrastructure. And 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 the types of prices that matter. In those environments, you often think about something like tuberculosis. A $10 test is too expensive, so being able to operate in that realm in those countries is is that the core of what we're doing? And and we're starting to get involved in that. Thank you. Unfortunately, we are out of time. I'm sure there are more questions for Elizabeth and carried you to talk to her afterwards, but thank you so much This way. All right,