On 4 May 2019, EO Healthcare interviewed Xiarong Li (李厦戎), the founder of GeneDock.
Xiarong Li proudly poses by his company's signboard. Photo: Credit to EO Healthcare
On 4 May 2019, EO Healthcare interviewed Xiarong Li (李厦戎), the founder of GeneDock. Genedock is a Beijing based genetic big data company and is committed to providing big data solutions for the Chinese Healthcare industry.
Genetic testing and analysis can help individuals understand their physical conditions, find the source of the disease, and monitor their health. Hereditary genetic characteristics can be analyzed by the genetic data as well. By the help of genetic data analysis, it is possible to study the etiology and transmission paths of various diseases.
GeneDock is a company dedicated to the establishment of clinically-oriented precision medicine data operating systems based on genetic data production lines, opening up clinical applications, sample testing, analysis, interpretation, and using genetic data to achieve accurate medical treatment. Recently, EO Healthcare has interviewed Xiarong Li, founder of GeneDock. He believes that the clinical application of precision medical data technology has great potential, but its business collaboration and data technology still face several challenges.
Before the founding GeneDock, Xiarong Li was the Chief Data Scientist of Umeng, an Alibaba affiliated analytics company. He learned about the gene sequencing technology during a chat with friends. "This is a technology that can change our future," he thought. The close relationship between the human genome sequence and health data will bring about tremendous changes in clinical medicine, and the gene is largely a "data problem". It just happens that his accumulated knowledge and skills fit perfectly with this field.
"This industry is still at a nascent stage," Li said. In China, there are less than 200 hospitals or institutions doing genetic testing, and many of them do not have analytical capabilities. Instead, they rely on cooperation with third-party testing institutions. The market demand for genetic testing and data analysis is still expanding in China; however, it still needs a significant time to be a mature industry.
Li introduced that its main business is to develop a clinically-oriented integrated precision medical data operating system and a diagnostic aid model and decision support system for subdividing diseases through massive genetic data. This kind of methods can help doctors achieve effective management and solve problems such as complicated workload and long cycle in the course of diagnosis and treatment. At present, there are four core products: group data production line, precision medical workstation, intelligent molecular diagnostic lab and molecular diagnostic collaboration system, and genetic diagnosis report writing software.
The company has cooperated with dozens of top hospitals and scientific research institutions such as Southwestern Hospital, West China Hospital and Southern Medical University In July 2018, completed the B round of financing of CNY 50 million. GeneDock is deepening in the field of research and development and application of genetic data.
In recent years, as China's medical needs have climbed, medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies are continually seeking new opportunities for industrial upgrading. We have planned a series of interviews and topic reports on medical data, focusing on the subversion and transformation brought by the big data to all links on the medical industry chain.