Golden Helix in 2016
We had a terrific year 2015. It was the year in which we got serious about the clinical testing market. We successfully continued on the path of attracting more referenceable clients such as University of Iowa, Baby Genes, Prevention Genetics and many more. We rounded out our VarSeq suite by adding more clinically relevant features and of course by adding VSPipeline and VSReports. 2015 was the year in which we put Golden Helix on the map as a true market leader in the clinical analytics space. With our products, patients are being diagnosed for cancer and for hereditary diseases. We are on the front line of Precision Medicine.
Why is it preferable for testing labs to do business with us?
- Business Model: Many companies in our industry charge per sample. Essentially, this model is dictated by investor pitches promising exponential growth. For our clients, this approach is a creating a huge headache. Not only is it very expensive as the number of samples in a lab increase, it also creates a tax. Clinical pipelines have to be validated on a regular basis. Re-running test samples in that pipeline can’t be charged to insurance providers. In a per-sample cost model, this adds potentially tens of thousands of dollars per year in overhead. In addition to that, clinicians often re-run samples due to quality issues at the sequencing stage. Each of this runs would incur an extra charge. All of this is not a problem with Golden Helix. We charge a simple annual subscription and empower our clients to get as much use as possible from that.
- Large global client base: We do business with hundreds of client organizations across the globe. We have thousands users across all of our products. Every release of one of our software products is immediately reviewed and scrutinized. The same goes for our annotation sources, tutorials and scripts. We learn about state of the art workflows and methods and integrate those in our platform. Also, this instant feedback allows us to get the tiniest details right. And those matter for our customers. Every new clients benefits from this network effect.
- Proven and tested business partner: We have been operating in this space for almost two decades. We are a successfully growing tech company that is not dependent on raising constantly new rounds of cash to make payroll. We have accomplished this by listening carefully to our clients and build products that meet their needs. We plan to be around for decades to come.
So, what is our plan for 2016?
- More innovation: We will add another product to our lineup. In the first quarter of 2016, we will launch VSWarehouse. This product allows our clients to store their sample data and clinical reports in a large database. There are many clinical use cases for this product. For example, VSWarehouse can be used as an annotation source. It can answer the question, whether or not a variant has been observed in the past and at what frequency. It can tell what the assessment of the clinician at the time of reporting was. It can also tell if the pathogenicity of a variant has changed. More research focused labs can run cohort analysis on the warehouse. Last but not least, it has an interface that allows it to inter-operate with existing lab systems that are part of the testing workflow. We have a number of clients that participate in an early adoption program. If you are interested to learn more, feel free to contact me directly.
- More content: We are supporting the community by sharing best practices in our field. For 2016, we are planning a slew of new or updated e-books that discuss best practices in a wide range of areas such as genome wide association studies, warehousing of genetic data and many more.
- Improve usability and functionality of our existing products: We are working on an aggressive road map to incorporate your suggestions for SVS, VarSeq, VSReports, VSPipeline and GenomeBrowse. Expect from us a slew of releases that address your suggestions and feedback. In the end, we are in business because we build highly functional products.
On behalf of Golden Helix, I’d like to thank our clients and partners for all the wonderful support. We are looking forward into an exciting year 2016!
