Why I am becoming an entrepreneur again

I am coming out of retirement to solve a problem that has been haunting me for the past three years: the inequity in medical care and diagnostics and the extreme suffering that billions of people face as a result.?

Let me explain. I have written about the incredible progress that Karkinos Healthcare has made in India in creating a distributed cancer care network and a platform for the world's most advanced medical research. So far, Karkinos has risked assessed more than 1.5 million people for cancer, identified 6% at risk, and assisted 45,000 patients. It has saved many lives. However, the screenings are just for the most common cancers: oral, breast, cervix, and colorectal. To be able to detect a broader range of cancers, we need to conduct advanced blood and genomic tests. But the vast majority of the population cannot afford these tests. (It is the same in the United States for people without insurance.) We need to get the cost of a full spectrum of tests down to less than Rs. 1,000 ($12), and there has been no way to do this.

So, I have licensed a technology from another world-changing company I have long been mentoring, Plasma Waters . This technology could solve the problem by literally opening up another dimension in science. Elements and compounds have spectral signatures by which their presence can be detected. I believe that this technology can decipher the analytes in human fluids in plasma streams in the same manner.

If I succeed, the cost of doing a full spectrum of medical tests will be less than the cost of a meal. And these will be done on small desktop devices in doctors’ offices with the results being delivered on a smartphone in less than 5 minutes.

Yes, I know this sounds crazier than Theranos; and it is an order of magnitude more ambitious.? That is why I am calling it a moonshot.? I never in my wildest dreams thought I would be leading the development of such technologies.? But I am going to do the opposite of what Elizabeth Holmes did and what the biotech industry does: there will be no secrecy and no excessive profit motive, and even the pilot devices will be made available to researchers all over the world so that they can start exploring new worlds with us.? This will be an open-sourced research platform to help billions of people by identifying the subtlest pathology markers. We will do everything by the book, in the most ethical and humanitarian ways.

I have some incredible people who are partnering with me and co-founding or advising Vionix Biosciences . My executive team includes Asaf Zviran , who founded one of Israel's top biotech firms, C2i Genomics ; Binay Panda, professor at Jawaharlal Nehru University; Alex Salkever a dear friend and marketing guru. Our advisors include scientists who are legends in their fields: Keith Flaherty , Aparna Parikh , Mitesh Borad, M.D. , Patrick Pirrotte , Mahul B. Amin M.D. , JiNan Glasgow George . And our hotshot engineering team includes Max Saona , Rubén Vi?uela , Pablo B. , and others.

Our vision:

DNA sequencing has translated biology into data, revealing a vast digital universe of genetic knowledge and opening up new realms of exploration and understanding at the crossroads of biology and technology.

But even DNA has limitations — it is abstracted from the actual physical processes. In contrast, spectroscopy and light signatures can tell us exactly what is happening inside our bodies, continuously and cheaply ? We can create a world of streaming biological data that spots the smallest problem as soon as it appears, a stream available to every human on Earth.?

This is the dream and the goal: to illuminate the data of life; traverse unexplored territories on the ultimate frontier, life’s inner workings; and unravel our greatest mysteries: ourselves.