The Industrialist's Dilemma： Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe

Name: The Industrialist's Dilemma： Anne Wojcicki, CEO of 23andMe
Uploaded: 2026-05-17T10:22:05.647Z
Duration: 31 min 40 s
Channel: Anne Wojcicki
Description: The opportunity to restructure the healthcare system in the United States begins with consumers owning their own personal health data, according to 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. Consumers are realizing that they not only need to follow their doctors' advice but can also inquire about the costs of various services.

Anne Wojcicki

May 17, 2026

The opportunity to restructure the healthcare system in the United States begins with consumers owning their own personal health data, according to 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. Consumers are realizing that they not only need to follow their doctors' advice but can also inquire about the costs of various services.

Anne, how are you doing? Good. Good to see you. Good to have you here. Thanks. So what we're talking about is disruption and the dilemma that industrial companies face when new digital, essentially disruptors, come into their industry. So we've talked about retail. We've talked about commerce. We've talked about new hardware products. We've talked about finance. Now we want to move more to a completely different industry, healthcare and life sciences. So why don't you just maybe set the picture of what is 23andMe, why did you start it, what was the origin, how did it all come about? So I started 23andMe after investing in healthcare companies for about 10 years. So 23andMe is now about 10 years old. And we started with some of the principles that I learned when I was on Wall Street. And the main one was that the consumer, being all of you, actually has no voice in healthcare. And that it's a system that's really odd because everyone above you is selling to each other, but it trickles down to you, but you don't actually have a voice in all these processes. And I found it actually really insulting, like personally insulting. I would volunteer in hospitals, and you start to see how all this money is being made and all these decisions are happening that are not always in your best interest. And I saw the HIV community. And the HIV community in the 90s was angry and aggressive and demanded transparency. And they had groups, like there was a famous group out in San Francisco called Project Inform. And Project Inform was led by a patient advocate who kept all the patients up to date with resistant data and what was happening and what was coming. And they went, they actually went and they stormed the FDA at one point. You can see this footage of them coming in and breaking in. They were super aggressive. And if you think about patient advocates, if you can contrast that with groups like Komen and Livestrong, where there's just much more of this sort of accepting take of, oh, people are going to take care of me and they're going to do stuff, whereas the HIV community demanded transparency. And I realized I wanted to see more of that anger by the consumer that they wanted to take control back of their own health care. And I almost see that today's health care consumer is akin to a communist society inhabitant where they're so used to the system taking care of them that they're just completely apathetic to actually taking charge of themselves. And they just defy, like, they don't take the responsibility for themselves because they're so used to other people actually taking, making decisions for them. So 23andMe was intentionally set out as a mission-driven company with the idea that we actually wanted to drive change. It was not set out with a traditional business plan. It was not set out with, I want to make money in these kinds of ways and that I'm trying to monetize, you know, a new reimbursement strategy. It was set out that I want to activate an angry population that wants to drive change in health care. And so what we did is we said there is a revolution happening in genetics where you can go and get your, you could get a genome-wide coverage, so it's not your entire genome, but it was a lot of the important variations in your genome, and you can get that pretty cheaply. And then I started to see this trend of Facebook and Livestrong and, like, all these communities coming together and realize people want to share. And being in the Valley, and also my father's a particle physicist here, who, like, physics was the science that pioneered a lot of big data work. And so you start to, I had this background, and you want big data to really understand the body. And human disease and health and wellness, super complicated, you know, and retail stores have figured this out. Like Walmart and Target, you walk into the store and they know what you're going to buy. And I kept thinking, like, well, if I'm walking into my doctor, they should know what I've been doing. They should know what I'm likely to be developing in five years. They should predict what diseases I'm likely to get. And we do some of that with family history, but the idea is how could I actually empower the consumer to actually take control, one of the most exciting scientific developments that's come, and then also create this database of information so that then we could actually really transform health care. And so the mission of 23andMe was about enabling consumers to access, understand, and participate in and benefit from the human genome. And so we enabled a direct-to-consumer model, so you go online, you could order the kit, it started out at almost $1,000, you order it, it's a little kit, you spit in it, you mail it back to us, two to four weeks later, or maybe six weeks later, you get back the email that said, welcome to you. And the goal was, you know, we just enabled access, traditionally health care, you know, is hard to get, you have to go through someone, it's expensive, et cetera, you don't know how many are going to do it to do insurance, so we enabled the access, and now we want you to understand it, so we've tried to make it really simple with this belief that anyone can be a scientist. You don't have to have a PhD, you don't have to have a white coat, anyone could be a scientist, so we've enabled you to understand it, and then when we launched our research initiatives, we said, now you're actually going to benefit from it, because we don't understand what the majority of the genome actually means, and so the way we're going to actually decipher what the human genome means is not to wait for all the NIH grants to happen and for people to figure it out, but that we, the consumers, who want to actually see this happen, we're going to be the ones figuring out what the genome means, and we're going to be the ones that are benefiting it. So that was the start, I think I answered most of the questions. That was actually 80% of the fireside, so. Oh good. Think you'll get a beer now? What, how, I guess the question is, A, like how did the industry get to be the way it is today, and how far out of communism are we? Are we like 1940s China, like what are we talking about here? So I think, so one of my moments on Wall Street when I decided that I had to leave is I walked into this conference in D.C., and it was like a giant, it was like one of those giant D.C. hotel lobbies, like massive, and there was all these people in bad suits, like just dark, bad suits, and it was a conference on optimizing billing codes. And I realized, there must have been a thousand people in this room. And I realized, like, this system is never going to change. So many people make money on healthcare's inefficiencies, it's not going to change from within. And I remember I had one healthcare executive who's like, came out to the Valley, she's like, you Valley people, like so excited about WhatsApp, you know, $18 billion, it's my glove budget. Like, people don't realize the amount of money, $2.7 trillion in healthcare, it just dwarfs everything else. So when you think about changes, like, when there comes out to be a new, you know, Congress actually sets, like, payments for certain kinds of drugs, that has massive hundred million dollar or billion dollar swings on things. So the system is set up in a way that all these other people are fighting over these massive pools of money, but because you don't have a voice, I think it's not really the efficient system you want. I think one of the biggest issues that we have is that nothing, and when you talk about problem in the system, is that there's no way you monetize diabetes, or no way you monetize wellness. So if I think about trying to keep you healthy, instead of actually becoming diabetic, if I can actually prevent, diabetes is largely preventable, and if I succeed in doing that, no one makes money from the system. But all these companies, like, make money on treating diabetes and managing all the other types of consequences from it. And I think that's one of the problems, is because there's no monetization path, there's no money in prevention. Do you think the leaders of the large companies don't want to change because they want to keep it the same, or do you think they don't know how? I think there's no financial path to change. And if you were running those companies, would you be doing the same thing because that's the financial incentive that's put in front of you as a leader? Well, I think as you, so most of the healthcare companies have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the bottom line. And so, like, I met one hospital company, and they came to me, and they're like, this back when I was on Wall Street, and he's like, we're so excited, we're seeing margin expansion because we moved collections into the emergency department. So when we get them, like, we get them on the gurney. And so, like, they come in, and like, and so, you know, there's like, part of it that I'm saying is like, there's a sick element of how healthcare happens. And it's not that these people, I always say healthcare is a system that's filled with good people, but the ship is pointing the wrong way. So if everyone's, like, off to go and make, you know, discoveries, but they're pointed to Alaska, like, it's just, it's, you know, you're just, the ship's the wrong direction. Are there, are there certain business models in the incumbent side of healthcare that benefit from, that have an incentive structure that is aligned with the patient and with the individual? So I think the most- Like accountable care organizations, as an example. Right, so I think one of the most interesting things that's happened in healthcare lately is Obamacare. Okay. And so I actually think that Obamacare coming in has created, I came up, a couple things came up that made me think about it, has really disrupted. So everyone has to be covered in this country. Everyone has a right to be covered. So people, when they worry about insurance and such, when I used to talk to insurance companies, I'd ask different questions, like, oh, would you discriminate against someone who found out they're a carrier for CF? And they'd be like, yeah, of course, like, that's what we do. Margin. Yeah. And so the day after Obama was reelected, one of the insurance called, and they're like, ----, like, we, you know, like, this Obamacare thing's really going to stay, and we're supposed to keep people healthy, and we make money off discriminating. And so do you know how to keep people healthy? And like, that's, you know, it's a little bit of the reality. It's like, there was a joke, again, when I was on Wall Street, that insurance companies would recruit Medicare patients on the second floor of walk-up buildings, because you're selecting for the healthy. And so there's like, the reality, there's all kinds of gains, because you're trying to sort of, you know, you're playing the game. What do you, actually, just super, just tangent, what do you think about that pharma kid in Wall Street? The hedge fund guy? Oh, yeah. I think it's, I mean, those are the types of things, and we're, I mean, it's kind of just discussed. Yeah, well, you see it. Like, it was one of the things that we used to talk about at home. Like, yeah, you can just raise drug prices as much as you want. And so normally, like, he really exploited it. Normally it's slightly more subtle. Right. And, like, they'll do it in smaller increments, but it's going up all the time. But, yeah, and I mean, he really went more crazy with it. Right. What, so, okay, so what is the, so where does 23andMe fit into, then, I guess, driving then change? What is the, where do you see your role in then empowering the individual to make either different choices about what health care providers they go to, or, you know, making different life decisions from a healthy. Yeah, so I was going to say, so that was one of the things I think is the interesting change with Obamacare is that there's been this whole movement now of actually getting health care into places where people are going. And so if you see Walmart actually has introduced a number of different, like, the $40 wellness checkup. So you can go in there and you can get a $40 doctor's visit. Kaiser, you should have talked to Bernard about this, Kaiser's in Target in Southern California. There's all kinds of ways that retail is becoming sort of the hub of where you're actually going to be experiencing your health care. So when I think about some of the big transitions that are going to happen there, it's going to be potentially, like, you start absorbing a lot of your health care on your mobile phone. Like, you call a bunch of doctors, you take a picture of your mole, you send it out to 10 physicians, or you start going into retail stores where you're naturally going. And, okay, but so then, so how, that's the shift toward retail. Where do you guys fit into then enabling the individual? So, so I think what we have done, and in the early days, people were kind of, people used to always ask, so, like, am I allowed to get this data? Am I allowed to post it online, because we would enable people to, like, easy access to post on Facebook. And they're like, are you allowed to post that you're a BRCA carrier on Facebook? So I think one of the most important things that we've done is we just wake up that communist patient, consumer, just to say, like, you're actually, like, you actually have the ability to ask questions. Like, you don't have to do what your doctor tells you. You don't, you have the right to get your data. You don't, you have the right to actually ask, like, what's it going to cost? And, like, these are just, like, basic things, like, in any other sector. I mean, it's one of the things I think is interesting, even with the fact that you're having this conversation. Like, every other sector has been disrupted, except for healthcare. Like, healthcare, we still sort of all accept. Like, when you go into the doctor, like, you fill out the form, like, we just kind of accept that it's going to be a horrible experience. So I think the most important thing that we've done is we've tried to actually say the consumer should have a voice in this. And I think with Walmart and other groups coming in, if you think about someone saying, like, oh, you're high risk for type 2 diabetes, and you go to Walmart, and they say, oh, great, aisle 7, like, running shoes, workout DVDs. So there's an economic lift to them in the prevention market. Whereas if you ask Bernard about, well, Bernard, Kaiser's different. But if you talk to sort of the majority of hospital groups, like, you talk to Stanford, for instance, Stanford, they are going to be, they're going to have less focus on the wellness because they make, the hospital makes money by people coming in. Do you think it's a generational issue? I've spoken with physicians, and they'll often say when the younger generation comes in, they feel like they're asked to defend what their recommendation is for the patient. Whereas if an older patient walks in, the older patient just does what he or she, as the doctor, recommends. Do you think what you're empowering is kind of that next generation coming up, and it'll be driven more by the youth? Yeah, I think, without a doubt, I think that there is a generational divide where people are used to the white coat is the symbol of authority, and you follow what they say. And this is a generation that's really, that's grown up with, everyone here has grown up with WebMD. But when WebMD came out, it was just wildly controversial. Doctors hated WebMD, and it was just one of those things. Everyone talked about how much, it's like they're challenging the physician. It was wildly controversial, and it's accepted today that, of course, you go and you research your disease. What, okay, so you now have, how many total customers do you have? Can you share that? 1.2 million. 1.2 million, got it, okay. So you have 1.2 million sort of profiles of genetic data and genetic information. What, I guess, are, A, you allowed to do with that, and what are you starting to think about doing that? You brought in a pretty senior individual from Genentech to start to play around with kind of new business models there. Take us into, I guess, the future of the business. So first off, all customers that come in, we ask them to consent for research. So over 80% of customers are consenting for research today. And it's interesting, because when people talk about the iTunes, their terms of service, we actually really want people to read it, because there's nothing worse for us. We don't want people who aren't interested in really participating in it, because there's no bet, they're not going to take the surveys. If you're not interested in research, they don't take the surveys, so then it's not valuable. And I should emphasize that. Our research is only valuable if you take the surveys, because what we're doing is we're looking at the genetic information, and then we look at all the people, for instance, who say they're left-handed, or all the people who say they have diabetes, and then we do genetic analysis with that information. What was your question again? The future of the business. So in terms of, so the goal really was, how are we benefiting? How are we all going to go and benefit from the genome? And we have a team in-house that actually does analysis and does research, and obviously we hired Richard Scheller from Genentech, so we're doing our own therapeutics. And the original thought was that we were going to partner with all the academics and all the pharma partners out there, because we actually believe that that was going to be the fastest way for us to understand what the human genome means. And we have, in the consent policy that we have, is that your genome is yours. And so we have, you've given essentially 23andMe the ability to do research on it, but we will never give anyone else your genetic information without your explicit consent. So there's really two aspects. Like one, we can't do research without your consent, and two, we will never actually give away your genome. We'll never sell. There's all kinds of speculation like, oh, are you selling individual genomes? We will never do that without explicit consent. And so the goal has been, how is it that we can actually partner with the research world and the pharma companies to actually get as much understanding in the genome as we can? And that's where I'm amazed, you know, and as much as in the privacy debate, I'm perpetually amazed at how many people actually want to participate. And when I email customers about, do they want to participate in an Alzheimer's study funded by a pharma company, do you want to participate, the consent rates are incredibly high. Like people, and I think something that to tap into in healthcare is that if you're somebody who's sick, if you're somebody who has Alzheimer's or somebody who has lupus disease or some other, you know, incurable condition, you want to cure. You're not worried about HIPAA. You're not worried about the privacy. If there's some way to have a cure, you want to participate in that. And I think that's where the current research process is incredibly frustrating. So are you, you are, are you monetizing that sort of lead acquisition? Okay. So that's one form of monetization, which is you can find participants in different tests that are much more, um, kind of, uh, uh, you know, much more appropriate for that test because of all the genetic data that you have. Right. Well, usually what happens is pharmas originally were coming at us to say like, we want to do, um, you know, we want to do, um, an analysis on lupus patients and you have X number of people in this. So can you run what's called the genome wide association study? So originally we're sort of genetics research for hire. Um, we have done a number of different research projects with, um, pharma companies as well where they just run a one run queries in the database. So they work with the team. They'll say, I have these questions, I want you to run these queries in the database and we give them back the results. Um, a few pharma companies have now paid for us to build out communities for them. So like we are building out a lupus community where we go and we actively recruit lupus patients, um, who become lupus customers. Um, and then we ask them survey questions regularly and we're looking to see, is there, is there a genetic association with the disease? So in part, a lot of the work that we are doing with pharma is, is just very basic research about the disease. As the CEO of this business, what are the types of people you need to hire? You've got community builders, you've got sounds like pharma researchers, you're looking to build your team. What are the skill sets and functions you need in your company? So I'd say that's one of the hardest parts of 23andMe is that it's, um, it's a complicated business. Like it's definitely was not, um, simple. And in some ways the beauty of it, like being out here, we brought together, we wanted to bring together like the genetic world plus the, you know, the tech savvy world. And, um, you know, in our team we hired, for instance, a VP of market from, we are VP of marketing from Netflix and our head of international sales was from eHarmony. And then we have, you know, Richard Scheller who ran R&D for 15 years at Genentech. So those people don't really speak the same language normally. Um, and so we have to hire, um, people who are really good developers. Like we have to have people who can understand the consumer and the engagement and, and the whole wet, like that experience and how do you take really complicated information and make it accessible to people. And then we have to hire pretty sophisticated bioinformaticists, um, and those people are incredibly hard to find. And so there's a real dogfight in the Valley over hiring those people. Yeah. We're hiring a ton at Box. Yeah. Sorry for all that competition. I see. What, um, uh, so what, okay, so you've got, you've got this, you've got this sort of maybe lead acquisition approach for, for research experiments, you know, hypothetically you could even maybe target, um, you know, drugs, uh, at certain individuals and have a, you know, maybe. We don't do any of that. Got it. Cool. We don't, we're like further or earlier in the chain. Like we're, I think we're like an early R&D partner. Okay. Not even as a lead acquisition. Like we do early R&D. Okay. And we also do R&D in a way. So one of my favorite things, we do research that is otherwise impossible to do. So one example is like we did research projects on people who have two mutations and one mutation has a frequency of one in 10,000 people and the other mutation has a frequency of one in a thousand people. And so you can imagine that it's essentially impossible to find people who have both mutations. So we did a project, we had 24 of those people in the database. We emailed them to see if they want to do punch biopsies, which is like taking a piece of skin from your arm to make stem cells. So we email them and in 24 hours, eight people consent yes to do it. So we're not paying them, we're not doing anything, but they consented for it. But otherwise, like we're enabling a world of research that otherwise never could have even imagined. And which is one of the things I think is really cool is like including the genetic component into it by having a huge database that wasn't necessarily structured to say, oh, it's just a schizophrenia database or another type. It's just broad all comers. So who are you disrupting? What part of the supply chain or value chain of the life sciences kind of process are you disruptive to? Because it's clearly not Ancestry.com. So like what's that? Yeah. So we, I mean, I think one of the things that challenges is like we step on a lot of toes. And one of the, like some of the bigger toes that we step on are other academic partners. Because, you know, you look at some of the big groups and they can say, they get a grant, they get an NIH grant for $10 million to study schizophrenia. And that involves recruiting people and doing these studies. And like there was actually a study that came out in Parkinson's and you looked at the paper and there's like 20 authors on it, it was multiple years, multiple centers. You can just look at the paper, you're like, that probably costs $10 million. And we saw it and we, the results came out. We just ran the analysis in our database. It took four hours and then we got the same results and we're like, oh, like, and so we're definitely. And that's cheaper. Yeah. It's much cheaper. So for like, for me, I can almost draw that parallel and you guys are all so young, you don't remember this. But in the old days, if you wanted to go on a trip, you had to like go to a travel agency and you'd get brochures about hotels and it was just complicated and it was so hard to just like figure out what you want to do. And there's something that now, like now you just do a query and we want to do the same type of thing almost in genetic studies, like, oh, you want to know what types of conditions are associated with, you know, um, people who, you know, are night owls, you just run a query. And that's what the team, like the team that I hired from Genentech, that's what they do. They just like are running queries all day and they're like, it's amazing, like the amount of research we can just do because we just run the query and the data's all there. So when we're sitting here in 2021 and we're having this conversation again, what's 23 and me going to be like at that moment in time? What's your business going to be like? Where's the revenue coming from? I think first and foremost, we're always consumer focused. Like I, you know, and it's, it was really interesting hearing all the different discussions like here about what, who we are, who our competitors are and what we are. I'm really passionate about, and the reason why like I focus on like, the reason why I'm at the company still and like I try to maintain a lot of control over it is because I care a lot about the consumer involvement in this. And, and I think for us, like, I'm really interested in the wellness, like everyone at some point, like you want, I want to see a world where we actually understand the wellness. I want to see a world where no one takes an antibiotic who doesn't know if they're going to have an adverse event where you actually know, you know, most people take antidepressants and antihypertensives and antibiotics and they have no idea if it's going to work or if they're going to have side effects. Like it's kind of a crazy, I think we will look back at one point and say like, I was a crazy form of medicine. So I think that's one thing. And then I think two, on the drug discovery side, I think that drug discovery today is mostly done in mouse models. And part of what we're doing, part of what we're disrupting here is that we are, we're starting with the human. And I'm having, I have the hypothesis that if I start with the human and I have tons of data that my hypotheses have a higher likelihood of success in drug development than hypotheses that come out of mice. And so is that, will that play out? And that's part of the experiment to see, but I'm, I'm, I'm hoping that we will by that timeframe that we will be right. And that future state, do you do drug manufacturing and drug distribution, drug marketing, or do you partner with J&J and you know, Eli Lilly and Amgen? Maybe. I don't know. Which one? I don't know. I mean, either option. I think, yeah, I think both of them are viable options. I think like, to me, that's like a logistics practicality. It's not, it's like, so not, it's like, we'll figure out like what, whatever is the best way to actually get it out there. I mean, the main reason we, whatever we do, we will do in a different way. And I think that's part of what keeps us honest because we're consumer driven. Does, does something about your data set and the amount of kind of, you know, just like you're not having to deal on models or, or simulations, if a mouse is sort of a simulation, you get the raw, the raw data. Do you get to then either discover drugs that otherwise, you know, maybe are not, you know, being, being discovered otherwise and you can go do research in areas that, that nobody's paying attention to? So this is a real world example of actually what's come out now. So there is a genetic variant in a gene called PCSK9. And what happened is they discovered that there is, you know, you have HDL and LDL levels and there were certain people who have incredibly low LDL levels. And these people came into the clinic and they actually sequenced them and they found they had a mutation in a gene called PCSK9. And if you have that mutation, you just have incredibly low levels of LDL. And so there's now five pharma companies today developing drugs to try and mimic the same process that happens when you have that mutation in the drug. So in some ways it's these, what we call superhero studies, find people with really interesting extreme phenotypes and then understand their genetics. And so you can look at that. Like, why is it that some people could, there's obvious, like, why is it some people can live to a hundred? Why is it that some people could eat sugar all the time and they don't become diabetic? So is there, you know, why is it that some, like, I have no cavities, I have my, everyone has a superhero quality in themselves. But why is it that I have no cavities? Like, what is it that is in everyone that makes everyone unique? And is there some, does that lead to some kind of drug pathway? So I mean, then in this five year or 10 year future, could we see like an order of magnitude increase in the amount of drugs out there and they're highly specialized to me and everything gets way more personalized? Are you sort of powering that trend? One thing that I'm looking to also change, and I think also, I don't know how many people realize this, is that drug development is wildly ineffective. And so it's roughly $2 billion to develop a drug. And so there's, and it only gets more expensive. Like, there's really no other industry that brags about how they get more and more ineffective every single year. And so we're looking to try and change that. Like, could you actually go from start to finish and develop a drug for $300 million instead of $2 billion? So is there some way that you could massively disrupt? And I think that to me will have a huge impact. Like there's so many poorly treated diseases and also diseases need to be classified. Like not all breast cancer is breast cancer. How do you actually subdivide it? And then you'll have much more personalized treatments that have a genetic basis. So we would be actually coming into a renaissance in all of life sciences then? Yeah, I think that there's a big change that could happen in drug discovery. And I think that's the hypothesis that has to play out. I think in the immediate term, when I think about the next five years, it's about driving this consumer revolution. And I think that more and more as, you know, people who have never lived a day of their life or their adult life without Facebook, they just find it crazy to like have the healthcare system as it is. And so I think that's where you're going to see more and more of this awakening of the consumer movement in healthcare. Last question. Yeah. How should the FDA think about you and I think just all of this innovation in general, right? You have a regulatory environment that is used to an industrial world where it's a ten year process of developing a drug. It's going to cost a couple of billion dollars, there's going to be lots of lawyers involved, it's going to be a very slow moving process. How do you deal with a world where there's a lot of data, it's very dynamic, there's going to be maybe algorithms changing the very nature of a medical device. And so it's not something that's sort of fixed and static. How do you think the FDA should be updating or responding and kind of regulation in general in this space? So I think the best thing that the FDA needs to do is they need to set up an office out here because I think that there is, you know, they're really used to a drug coming onto the market or medical device coming on the market and it doesn't change. And this idea of like scrum development or what like is absolutely terrifying. So I mean, it's part of what we struggle with in just terms of like every, like the healthcare is changing. And I think that we're, to me, the healthcare landscape is like internet in the 90s. Like it is a barren landscape and it's about to be built and it would be a tragedy if regulation is what holds it back. And so they have been actually putting, like Stanford has a really good program where they have FDA leaders coming out here regularly. But it takes both sides. Like one of the things I say out here, people out here need to understand DC better and understand that, you know, you know, someone asked me at a recent meeting, like, oh, you know, are those five, 10 K's that you have to fill? Are they online? Like, do I just download it? And no one here laughed. Literally, when I told that to the FDA regulators, they're like, oh, that's like the best thing ever because there is no form, just in case you're wondering, you have to, like, it's a little bit of like this, of this iterative guessing process to figure out how exactly how does regulation happen. So I think both sides are going to have to really come to a better understanding and spend more time together in order for it to actually help move the needle forward. Are you hopeful that, I guess, under certain future administrations that would probably get even slowed down even further, right? So are you hopeful that that is actually going to happen in the next couple of years? Yeah, I mean, I think, I think that the ship has sailed in terms of like technology is coming into health care. Right. And I think that there's, without a doubt, there is a realization that they are going to, they need to get up to speed. And they're putting real effort into it. I mean, that's part of it with, you know, Obama has a big funding. That's actually a lot more money has gone now into the FDA. And I think, I think there is without a doubt a real need for, you know, tech savvy people to be there. Cool. Ann, thank you very much. Thank you. Cool. Thank you.