Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Sequencing.com CEO Brandon Colby (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: So you’re a B2C service?

Brandon Colby: We have a B2C arm. Our website is a marketplace for consumers. We also work in two different ways in terms of B2B. One is with app developers from bioinformatics companies.

These are companies that understand genetics analysis. They create some type of useful interpretation of DNA data. They provide their analysis services and reports through our marketplace.

Sramana Mitra: That’s your primary go-to market strategy?

Brandon Colby: The primary go-to market strategy is similar to the Apple App Store. We are the app store for DNA.

Sramana Mitra: How many such apps are on your platform?

Brandon Colby: Right now, we have more than 80 different DNA analysis, apps, and reports. We will be launching 15 by the end of May. By the middle of the summer, we’ll be well over a hundred.

Sramana Mitra: These hundred apps that are built on your platform, whom are they selling to?

Brandon Colby: The primary target for most of these companies are consumers that enable consumers to understand information about their genes.

Sramana Mitra: This is a layer of app providers who have specialized expertise on specific areas of DNA analysis. They’re taking the result of your DNA analysis, package up with further domain-specific insights, and then are going back out to the consumer base. Is that correct?

Brandon Colby: Yes.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk trends. In this 100 different kinds of analysis, what trends do we see?

Brandon Colby: The overriding trend is the shift from customization to personalization. People are very interested in products, services, and analyses that are personalized to them in some way. Sequencing.com performs that personalization based on a person’s DNA. That’s one of the main trends that we see in the healthcare industry whether it’s personalized treatment or prevention. What we do is, we enable that on a genetic level.

Sramana Mitra: Can you give me a bit more color on a few different applications and what kinds of players are building these applications? Pick three examples from your hundred different applications. Walk me through what they do on that trend and how do they align with their trend.

Brandon Colby: The first case we see quite often is a person who has had a 23andme test. They’re really interested in the results but they want more. They are able to upload that data file. It means nothing to most people. They upload that to Sequencing.com.

They use apps for personalized nutrition. There are apps that provide information about optimal diets and some susceptibilities they may have. We’re seeing a lot of people who would normally have 23andme testing and not be able to get any more information. Now they can find a resource to personalize many more things about their life. One of the key trends is in the nutrition category.

Sramana Mitra: How many of the hundred apps are in the personalized nutrition bucket?

Brandon Colby: There are more than 15 apps that are either focused on nutrition or have some nutrition-based content. There are apps for weight loss and for generalized nutrition. There are different takes that developers have on providing useful information about nutrition. 

This segment is part 2 in the series : Thought Leaders in Healthcare IT: Sequencing.com CEO Brandon Colby
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