Welcome to TANGrams!

Even hard puzzles have a solution. OraSure CEO Steve Tang explores how all of the pieces at OraSure fit together to unlock endless potential.

One Parallelogram, One Square, and Five Triangles

April 15, 2019

tan·gram

/?taNG?ɡram/

noun; a Chinese geometric puzzle consisting of a square cut into seven pieces that can be arranged to make various other shapes.

?This month I’m celebrating my one-year anniversary at the helm of OraSure Technologies. Since last April, I've immersed myself in the worlds of infectious disease, genomics, and the microbiome (more on that in a moment). In many ways, these disciplines are very much like the pieces of a tangram (interesting fact: the tangram first arrived in the United States in the early 1800s in my adopted city of Philadelphia). Each piece can stand on its own. But they also fit together in ways that can unlock  boundless potential.

Over the past year, I've been doing some serious thinking about what’s in us, on us, and around us. I'm also increasingly fascinated by all the activity and opportunity that exists at the intersection of science, business, and leadership.

Based on what I've seen, the future is bright (think Times Square) with many avenues to change both medicine and the human experience of disease. What I have always thought has been confirmed - that understanding human (and animal) health is more than diagnosing disease. It’s linking patients to targeted, precise care. It’s unlocking the stories that our DNA can tell. It's accepting that disease may have more practical roots than we ever expected. It's being willing to relearn much of what you thought you knew.

OraSure built its reputation on rapidly diagnosing illness such as HIV and Hepatitis C. Our sister company DNA Genotek earned kudos from Time Magazine for making DNA collection “ridiculously simple and efficient.” Our next frontier? The world of the microbiome. That's just another word for the trillions of bacteria and other organisms that live in and on your body. As I tell people I meet at a dinner party, try not to be creeped out because these hitchhikers are capable of doing a lot of good.  

The microbiome and its relationship to health and disease has been gaining a fair amount of news traction lately as researchers explore links to nutrition, disease, therapeutic interventions, lifestyle, and even longevity.

Over the coming months, I'll be posting more Tangrams about the future that I see. I'm excited to share news and insights from the worlds in which OraSure lives. Providing accurate, essential information, eliminating infectious disease, linking patients to care, powering global health - these pieces of OraSure’s tangram are the collective mission of our 400 employees. I invite you to join me as I endeavor to make sense of the forces shaping our world.