Francis Desouza on reimbursement expansion
From Illumina CEO joins Fast Money from the JPM Health Care Conference · · CNBC Television
“We're seeing an expansion of reimbursement for genomic testing. Last year we crossed a milestone where there are over 1 billion people now around the world that have reimbursement for some kind of genomic testing and that's continuing to grow and we said that that expects to get to two billion in a few years so a lot more people have access to genomic testing whether it's to select the right therapy for cancer or for genetic disease testing for the five percent of the population that has genetic diseases or NIPT and that's probably one of the biggest drivers of the growth in our core business just more access to the tests to expanded reimbursement.”
On , Francis Desouza, Former President & Chief Executive Officer at Illumina, Inc., spoke about reimbursement expansion during Illumina CEO joins Fast Money from the JPM Health Care Conference on CNBC Television.
About Francis Desouza
Francis deSouza, then CEO of Illumina, appeared on CNBC in December 2021 and January 2022 to discuss the company's role in COVID-19 genomic surveillance and its financial performance. In December 2021, deSouza stated that the U.S. had made progress in sequencing COVID-19 positives, reaching a national rate of five to ten percent in the prior three months, though he noted variability across states, with some sequencing 30 percent of positives and others only one percent. He described the Omicron variant as "surprisingly" heavily mutated, with over 50 new mutations, and said hypotheses for its emergence included chronic infection in an immunocompromised person, animal-to-human transmission, or circulation in an unsequenced population. He also said the U.K. had been a leader in genomic surveillance since April 2020, while most other countries did not follow until December 2020. In January 2022, deSouza said Illumina's 2021 revenue grew 39 percent over the previous year and that the company guided for 14 to 16 percent growth in 2022, which he described as "significantly ahead" of expectations. He attributed the growth to expanding reimbursement for genomic testing, noting that over one billion people worldwide had reimbursement for some form of genomic testing, with expectations to reach two billion in a few years. He also said that over 117 countries were using Illumina for COVID genomic surveillance, and that the company's Grail cancer detection test was signing up employers and healthcare providers.