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Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

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Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#11

Post by drakaal »

_ihaque wrote: post #7
drakaal wrote: post #4

I like things like this for diagnosis. The problem is in how insurance, employers, parents, and prospective mates will view it. GATTACA jumps to mind. Just because you can mine the email on Gmail to find everyone who secretly likes Justin Bieber and market to them doesn't mean you should. My genetics are much the same. Until I can mine them in the privacy of my own home with my own equipment and control what data is…

Insurers have been barred by law from discriminating based on genetic information since 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimi... . Counsyl definitely falls under the scope of HIPAA; we do tests at the request of physicians, so we're like any other lab as far as privacy is concerned. Your employer, parents, or prospective mate would only know about the results if you decide to tell them. I…

Your statement about privacy is already suspect since your opening comment talks about sharing that data. The two are mutually exclusive. As soon as your system is sharing, rather than me sharing I have no privacy.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#13

Post by rcthompson »

lvs wrote: post #9

What's revolutionary about 400 SNPs for $599? There's absolutely no chance to compete with that kind of product and pricing.

To pose the same question in another way: what does Counsyl give you for $599 that companies like 23andMe don't already give you for $99? I couldn't find anything on the counsyl website that addresses this.

Edit: Actually, I think the difference might be that Counsyl is marketing to a clinical market, as opposed to 23andMe which is direct-to-consumer. Since I've read that 10x price overhead for clinical stuff is typical (from a link on HN a while ago), maybe $599 isn't too bad a price in that market for something that is $99 direct-to-consumer. Who knows?

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#14

Post by chime »

I had a great experience of going through Counsyl's early-stage recruitment/interview process. They actually found me through a single post I made here on HN! The problems they gave me were very interesting and I got to Skype with the key engineering team members for a full day. I wish I could've moved to CA to take up on their offer but due to personal circumstances, I could only do remote. I don't get to say this often enough - I have the utmost respect for their founders, their vision, and the brilliant team they have gathered. If you are reading this and qualify for one of their job openings, I highly recommend you apply.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#15

Post by coherentpony »

chime wrote: post #14

I had a great experience of going through Counsyl's early-stage recruitment/interview process. They actually found me through a single post I made here on HN! The problems they gave me were very interesting and I got to Skype with the key engineering team members for a full day. I wish I could've moved to CA to take up on their offer but due to personal circumstances, I could only do remote. I don't get to say this o…

I applied and went through a very enjoyable three interviews with the CEO and two others. They seemed really interested in me and yet they never got back to me.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#16

Post by tikhonj »

The coolest thing about Counsyl is that it's taking the tech startup philosophy and ideas and applying them to biology. Software is eating the world, and Counsyl is bringing that to a new--and very important--arena.

An added benefit is that much of what Counsyl does does not depend on the actual biology behind it. I attended one of their infosessions at Berkeley, and I remember a whole bunch of jobs like managing supplies and billing that are simultaneously nontrivial and unrelated to the actual domain. I've never much liked biology personally, so that's very promising.

If you want to work on something meaningful but don't really like genetics or medicine, Counsyl still seems like a great option.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#18

Post by buss »

rcthompson wrote: post #13
lvs wrote: post #9

What's revolutionary about 400 SNPs for $599? There's absolutely no chance to compete with that kind of product and pricing.

To pose the same question in another way: what does Counsyl give you for $599 that companies like 23andMe don't already give you for $99? I couldn't find anything on the counsyl website that addresses this. Edit: Actually, I think the difference might be that Counsyl is marketing to a clinical market, as opposed to 23andMe which is direct-to-consumer. Since I've read that 10x price overhead for clinical stuff is typi…

The primary difference is that we're performing a clinical grade test that gives our patients actionable information. We only test for autosomal recessive disorders that will affect the health of your children. Unless you've been tested before, you don't know if you're a carrier. If both parents test positive for the same mutation then your child has a 25% chance of being born with the disease. This information allows you to make an informed decision about how to bring a healthy child into the world. (You have a few options once you have our test results -- in-vitro, adoption, or a normal pregnancy if the disease is manageable).

23andMe gives you SNP mutation results for many more genes that may or may not be associated with the disease that they report. They do a pretty good job of curation, but their SNPs do not guarantee your future disease status. Knowing that I have 2.3% higher odds of getting diabetes later in life is not going to meaningfully impact my day-to-day life, I already knew diabetes runs in my family, after all.

23andMe is great, don't get me wrong (many of us at Counsyl are 23andMe members, including myself), but they provide a different service for a different market.

Our test requires a doctor's prescription and we include a free genetic counseling session (from our own licensed genetic counselors) for all patients. Finding out that you and your partner are carriers for a serious disease can be a big surprise and cause a lot of confusion and stress. We have great GCs to explain the effects of each disease and how they could manage it in a child, if they choose to have a normal pregnancy. We're more than just a SNP testing lab, we want to give you all of the information you need to have a healthy pregnancy.

disclosure: I am a software developer at Counsyl, currently working on insurance automation and internal tools for our support staff.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#19

Post by pyre »

drakaal wrote: post #11
_ihaque wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurers have been barred by law from discriminating based on genetic information since 2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_Information_Nondiscrimi... . Counsyl definitely falls under the scope of HIPAA; we do tests at the request of physicians, so we're like any other lab as far as privacy is concerned. Your employer, parents, or prospective mate would only know about the results if you decide to tell them. I…

Your statement about privacy is already suspect since your opening comment talks about sharing that data. The two are mutually exclusive. As soon as your system is sharing, rather than me sharing I have no privacy.

It depends on the level of 'sharing.' If it's just statistics (e.g. 10% of people that use our service have discovered X disease), then I don't know how much of your privacy is pierced.

Re: Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave

#20

Post by bayesianhorse »

Pwnguinz wrote: post #5
drakaal wrote: post #4

I like things like this for diagnosis. The problem is in how insurance, employers, parents, and prospective mates will view it. GATTACA jumps to mind. Just because you can mine the email on Gmail to find everyone who secretly likes Justin Bieber and market to them doesn't mean you should. My genetics are much the same. Until I can mine them in the privacy of my own home with my own equipment and control what data is…

I think you meant GATTACA, the movie? To anyone who hasn't seen it, fantastic movie. Highly recommended. Re: your other points. I think your concerns are well placed, however this isn't something that's specific to Counsyl; 23andme presumably also carries the same risks. At any rate, I do believe they hold your genetic information to the same standards as required in HIPAA.

There is growing evidence that genetic testing to the extend it is used in GATTACA is impossible. For example you can't predict a baby's future height. Sure, you can tell a normal distribution from genetics which is narrower than the distribution of the general population, but it's not as predictive as people might assume.

Genetic data has proven to yield a lot less information than was expected. That might change in the future, but I don't believe health insurance companies could make a business case for genetic discrimination even if they were allowed too.

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