Thursday, May 25, 2017

SF's Genome Medical Raises $12M for Telemedicine Genetic Counseling

One of the challenges with the rapid growth of genetic testing is the shortage of genetic counselors.  Genome Medical, a San Francisco start up, aims to address this by rapid development of high-quality telemedicine services.

The startup has raised $12M in recent months from major investors such as Illumina Ventures, Canaan Partners, and others.   The company is founded by Randy Scott (previously involved in founding both Genomic Health and Invitae, which have a combined market cap of $1.3B), Lisa Alderson, and Harvard Medical School geneticist Dr. Robert Green.
  • CNBC story, here.
  • Genomeweb, here (brief).  Genomeweb subscription deep dive, here.
  • Genome Medical website, here.
In January 2017, Invitae acquired the patient-centered data information company AltaVoice (here).  Invitae also has collaborations centered around the Illumina spinout Helix (here) and Invitae announced a new exome service in March 2017 (here).   (Illumina has a current market cap of $25B).