23andMe CEO says health care will be personalized in the future
Anne Wojcicki said 23andMe wants to make health care more personalized
23andMe CEO on personalized healthcare based on genetic makeup
23andMe CEO and co-founder Anne Wojcicki discusses genetics role in personalized health care, arguing the current system is 'one size fits all.'
In the future, health care is going to be a lot more specific to your actual needs.
At least that’s according to 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. On Monday, Wojcicki told FOX Business’ Stuart Varney on "Varney & Co." that her company is focused on changing health care to be more personalized.
"Genetics is step one," Wojcicki said. "So if you really want to have personalized health care, you have to first know how everyone is different. So it’s kind of like when you sign up for Netflix, or you sign up for -- almost everything that we do today uses data and personalizes the experience for you. But health care is still very much of a one-size fits all kind of experience."
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She went on to say that 23andMe is working on changing the way people use their genetic information to help them understand their own potential health risks or predispositions.
With that information, people can learn how best to change their lifestyles to "potentially prevent or to better treat in the future," Wojcicki said.
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She added later: "Because if you think about your health, it’s not that you wake up when you’re 50 and suddenly say, oh now I have to take care of myself. Your health is a sum of what you’ve done everyday. So really helping people think about how, actually, they’re living their life and what those risk factors are, so that they can put some attention there."
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In addition to helping people get information about themselves, Wojcicki said 23andMe also does research.
"When we bring people together -- we have over 11 million people -- the power of this research now is amazing," Wojcicki said. "And what we’re doing now is we’re translating all of those insights into therapeutics. So if you do have a condition that we can actually then understand based on the genetics and then develop a drug that is going to be able to treat or cure."
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Wojcicki also told "Varney & Co." that her company is unique to the genetics industry.
"23andMe is really about empowering individuals to get access to their genetic information and learning about their ancestry and their health and then bringing everyone together, really crowdsourcing a whole new way of research that is going to do, you know, research and drug discovery," Wojcicki said. "So there’s really nothing else out there that is like that, that is very holistic that gives people you know, the ability to really understand their human genome."