23andMe Appoints “e-Patient Davide” to the Newly Created Position of Chief Patient Officer

I just received the following press release via email.

23andMe Appoints "e-Patient Davide" to the Newly Created Position of Chief Patient Officer

Appointment is a First for the Silicon Valley Pharmaceutical Company

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., – April 1 2015 – 23andMe today announced the appointment of Davide deBellagio, also known as “e-Patient Davide,” to the newly created position of Chief Patient Officer.

e-Patient Davide & Unidentified Executive

“The appointment of a Chief Patient Officer at 23andMe, the first for a Silicon Valley pharmaceutical company, shows our commitment to go further than mainstream pharma¹ in meeting the needs of patients and our investors,” said Steve Woz, an unspecified 23andMe executive. “Interactions with patients are a source of strength -- and wealth -- for the company and e-Patient Davide’s appointment will help ensure the patient perspective advances our profits and our approach to meeting the unmet needs of our investors, which include Roche and Johnson & Johnson.”

e-Patient Davide -- a pre-Alzheimer’s survivor -- is an international keynote speaker on healthcare who consistently earns extraordinary fees from consulting with various healthcare organizations.

“I am incredibly honored to be 23andMe's first Chief Patient Officer, or as I like to call it, Chief Patient Kibitzer,” said e-Patient Davide. “The Internet has altered the balance of power in healthcare. Patients are managing their own health and, in partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, making some money to boot.”

According to e-Patient Davide, his responsibility will be to further elevate the perspective of the patient within 23andMe by “kibitzing,” which is Yiddish for offering unwanted advice or commentary. There’s no better way for a patient to impact the future healthcare offerings of a pharmaceutical company than by “budding in” to ensure the unique priorities and needs of patients and caregivers are “top of mind” for senior executives. According to unnamed sources, 23andMe executives must subject themselves to daily “kibitzing sessions” delivered by e-Patient Davide as he roams the halls of the company and barges unannounced into executive suites.

“Hopefully, my unwanted input will not go unnoticed,” said e-Patient Davide as he posed for a photo op with Wojcicki outside 23andMe’s Mountain View headquarters.

“LOL,” said Woz. “What a kidder! Of course we'll notice. After all, 23andMe has always put the patient's interest first, even ahead of the FDA's interest in ensuring that our products were tested and performed as advertised. By ignoring the FDA for several months we were able to go directly to patients to collect their DNA and give them the results they wanted. In the process we developed a database of over 800,000 samples before our DNA kit was pulled from the market by the FDA. We used that asset to become the first Silicon Valley pharmaceutical company -- all on the patients' dime! Now, that's PATIENT CENTRIC! So, sure, we'll take note of e-Patient Davide's input, but we will probably ignore it just like we did FDA's input. We're from Silicon Valley, we're rich, and we know it all.”

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, which are statements that are neither historical nor scientific facts. Although 23andMe’s management believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, investors are cautioned that forward-looking information and statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, many of which are difficult to predict and generally beyond the control of 23andMe and that could cause actual results and developments to differ materially from those expressed in, or implied or projected by, the forward-looking information and statements. These risks and uncertainties include among other things, the uncertainties inherent in patient centricity, upper management listening skills, guarantees that any changes will actually happen, etc.

[Happy April Fools' Day!]

¹Woz is referring to Sanofi's appointment of Anne C. Beal, MD, MPH, as Chief Patient Officer, the first such officer appointed by a top 10 biopharmaceutical company. I interviewed Dr. Beal and her colleague Melva T. Covington, MPH, MBA., PhD, Project Leader, Research and Development, Sanofi (listen below):

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