To make a long story short, we had a blast at ASHG14.

The traffic at our booth was terrific. Every day we had scheduled presentations on VarSeq, SVS, and GenomeBrowse which were very well attended. And of course, there were our new t-shirts. The new designs were well received. If anything we promise to bring more next year. In particular more in size s 🙂

The conference is a great venue to connect with existing clients and meet with new prospects and partners. On our end, we make sure that we have people from marketing, product development, and support in the booth. That way, we have better, more indepth conversations staying connected to our user base.

Now, the conference itself had excellent tracks. Naturally, given our focus on clinical testing, I attended a number of sessions on the clinical use of genomic data. It’s clear that gene panels are used routinely for clinical testing. If anything those panels are becoming larger and larger.

A number of sessions dealt with more complex issues around the usage of whole exomes and genomes in clinical settings. As we are trying to understand how to diagnose and treat rare and/or complex disorders, the field has to deal with ambiguity around the level of disclosure. In a number of sessions the issue of incidental findings as well as findings of unknown clinical relevance were discussed. Judging based on the outcome of the discussion, this will be largely driven by the patient’s comfort level to be informed.

We could have not launched VarSeq at a better time. The field is ready to take the next step in using genomic data for diagnostic purposes. The next twelve months will be exciting for us until it is time for ASHG15 in Baltimore.

In the meantime. Stay twisted.