We are a commercial stage molecular diagnostics company specializing in the field of pharmacogenetics, or PGx. IDgenetix, our PGx product testing portfolio, enables personalized therapeutic decisions for patients suffering from some of the most prevalent clinical conditions in the United States, including cardiovascular disease, neuropsychiatric disorders and pain. Our bioinformatics platform and PGx product testing portfolio are intended to serve as a tool to assist healthcare providers in identifying optimal drugs for their patients as well as dosing guidelines based on a patient’s genetic make-up, current prescription regimen and other key factors. IDgenetix is designed to enable healthcare providers to make timely and evidence-based decisions, which we believe can reduce the overall cost of patient care by reducing adverse events, optimizing patients’ overall therapeutic regimen and helping to achieve a faster therapeutic response.
In 2013, the U.S. healthcare system spent in excess of $260 billion on prescription drugs and that amount is expected to exceed $450 billion in 2022. Nearly 50% of the U.S. population, and almost 90% of people 65 years and over (or approximately 36 million patients), take at least one prescription drug and more than 10% of the U.S. population, and almost 40% of people 65 years and over (or approximately 16 million patients), take five or more prescription drugs, which we refer to as polypharmacy. We estimate that the overall potential market opportunity for IDgenetix is greater than 150 million patients in the United States, representing the number of people that take at least one prescription drug, which includes the more than 30 million people who are polypharmacy.
We believe there are significant health concerns and unnecessary costs associated with the trial-and-error manner in which physicians prescribe drugs, without prior knowledge of an individual patient’s genetic profile. There are an estimated 100,000 deaths and more than two million serious adverse reactions attributable to prescription drug use in the United States each year, at a cost to the healthcare industry that exceeds $136 billion annually. It has been estimated that genetics can account for up to 95% of variability in drug disposition and effects and as much as 40-60% of adverse drug reactions. We believe IDgenetix can improve clinical outcomes and reduce the overall cost of prescription drugs by enabling better drug selection, earlier favorable results and lower occurrence of adverse events.
We designed IDgenetix to provide a comprehensive PGx test offering to best meet the needs of our target customers such as long-term and post-acute care facilities, government facilities, integrated delivery networks, or IDNs, and managed care organizations. These institutional healthcare providers require broad PGx testing capabilities to manage a large and diverse patient population, with patients often suffering from multiple clinical conditions. These customers often operate under fixed-fee-per-patient or fixed-fee-per-procedure arrangements and are searching for ways to improve clinical outcomes at the lowest possible cost. In addition, IDgenetix addresses the needs of physicians across multiple specialties, such as cardiologists, general practitioners, obstetricians and neurologists.