Starting last summer, we surveyed thousands of people who took our Family Prep Screen, and spent hundreds of hours speaking with physicians and patients in order to understand how Counsyl fits into their lives. We talked with an incredibly diverse set of people, including an opera singer, a military wife, a physician in Long Island, and a man in Costa Rica who’d flown to the U.S. to get Counsyl.
What did we hear? It has become clear that Counsyl is doing something special; when we spoke to our patients, what stood out was a sense of relief after learning their results. In fact, many of them said “it’s good to know,” when describing the value of Counsyl, which is why we have now made this phrase the tagline of our company.
We’ve quietly been testing a new “Get Counsyl” approach over the past few months, and are thrilled to report that it has already introduced over a hundred new doctors to Counsyl. Our vision is to give millions of men and women access to vital information about their bodies so they can confidently make choices about their lives. Today’s launch is the first step in making this vision a reality.
As a part of this launch, you’ll see:

• Results available online to any patient who requests them from our support team
• New educational videos featuring our very own Kaylene Ready, MS, CGC
• Counsyl Complete, a service that allows providers and patients to communicate about results in real-time
• On-call counseling with a medical professional for immediate consultations on positive results
• Get Counsyl, a way for people to request a prescription through their doctor
• A price estimator that provides people with transparency around the cost of screening
• An improved Family Prep Screen which can pick up 50% more carriers using new sequencing technology
• Our Inherited Cancer Screen, starting with cancer susceptibility genes BRCA1 and BRCA2

We’re energized about our new offerings. But more importantly, we’re excited at what these new services can do for patients.  The chance to help patients make clinical choices is an incredible responsibility, and one that we take very seriously. And as they made these choices, some patients have been gracious enough to share their stories with us. Jodi K. learned that she inherited a BRCA1 mutation from her father. Jodi consulted several medical specialists and decided to pursue a preventative mastectomy. Similarly, Holly T., a hairstylist in California recently learned of her BRCA positive status and is weighing her options. Holly said “I want to be here for my kids, and I want to do everything I can to stay healthy.”
We are going to keep pushing the envelope and continue to innovate here at Counsyl, because real people like Jodi, Holly, and the countless others who shared their personal stories with us, depend on it. As Brittany M. from Maine told us, “It was just really good to finally have the information that we wanted.”
-Ramji, Rishi and Eric