CGS-authored
In 2003, back when such things remained unpredictable, a woman gave birth to a baby boy with Down syndrome. Her family was shocked. She had undergone the standard screening tests while pregnant—a blood test followed by an ultrasound—but the results had come back negative. Nor did she have the risk factors associated with Down, like advanced maternal age; she was 32. “She was not prepared for this,” recalls Matthew Rabinowitz, her brother. When the boy died six days later, his mother was devastated.
The event left a deep impression on Rabinowitz. A young Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had recently left Stanford with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, he had just sold the second of two successful IT startups and was casting about for a new venture. Current methods of prenatal screening carry a significant margin of error, and his sister’s false negative suggested an opportunity. “I saw that we were applying our information technology and signal processing to various aspects of life, including cell phones and laptops, but not enough to the area of helping parents have healthy children,” says...
The event left a deep impression on Rabinowitz. A young Silicon Valley entrepreneur who had recently left Stanford with a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, he had just sold the second of two successful IT startups and was casting about for a new venture. Current methods of prenatal screening carry a significant margin of error, and his sister’s false negative suggested an opportunity. “I saw that we were applying our information technology and signal processing to various aspects of life, including cell phones and laptops, but not enough to the area of helping parents have healthy children,” says...