GE Introduces Healthcare Technology Company to Revolutionize Blood Collection

MENLO PARK, Calif.–()–Today, GE introduced Drawbridge Health, a privately-held healthcare technology company focused on enabling personal diagnostic testing — anytime, anywhere. Drawbridge Health is developing proprietary technology designed to integrate draw, collection and sample stabilization into a single device.

Healthcare providers will be able to deliver a superior patient experience, eliminating the need for phlebotomy and travel to blood draw centers. This integrated technology is also being developed to support room temperature shipping and streamlined downstream processing, ensuring reliable, accurate results. Through this integration of engineering and proprietary chemistry, Drawbridge Health is developing a people-friendly system for drawing and stabilizing blood samples.

The Drawbridge solution is being designed to offer a way for healthcare providers and diagnostic testing companies to better engage their patient-consumers and help enable them to manage their own health — driving a shift from reacting to tracking. By introducing a simple, comfortable blood draw solution, Drawbridge Health can alter the market for patients and healthcare providers by broadening the availability and access for molecular tests for a variety of diseases, as well as providing a convenient way to monitor overall health, therapy response and disease progression.

“At GE we share technology, markets, structure and knowledge across our varied businesses, which uniquely positions us to tackle many issues, including this one,” said Risa Stack, Managing Director of New Business Creation, GE Ventures. “With Drawbridge Health, we are combining technology from GE Global Research, expertise from GE Healthcare and business models from GE Ventures to offer a simple, safe and more efficient solution that can help save time, money and lives.”

Lee McCracken joined Drawbridge Health as Chief Executive Officer and the company’s Board of Directors, bringing more than 25 years of experience developing and growing businesses across the biotech, pharma and diagnostics sectors. Previously, he served as CEO of Gensignia Life Sciences, a molecular diagnostics company focused on the early detection of lung cancer through the integration of miRNA biology and digital health algorithms. Lee holds a BS in Commerce from Santa Clara University, a Master of Computer Science from the University of Dayton and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA.

“At Drawbridge Health, we have a tremendous opportunity to uniquely enable not only effortless access to diagnostic testing, but to also transform how diagnostics companies and healthcare providers interact with their patient-consumers,” said Lee McCracken, CEO, Drawbridge Health. “The current sample testing process is inconvenient and challenging for patients and medical providers, alike. It requires clinical processing equipment, often a technician specifically trained to draw blood, plus a trip to the doctor’s office or hospital. By combining world class GE technology and a talented founding team to address an important market need, Drawbridge Health is well positioned to transform diagnostic testing for healthcare stakeholders, testing laboratories, patients and consumers.”

Drawbridge Health is led by Lee McCracken, Chief Executive Officer, along with Board Members, Risa Stack, General Manager of New Business Creation at GE Ventures, and Ger Brophy, General Manager of Cell Therapy at GE Healthcare Life Sciences.

About Drawbridge Health

Drawbridge Health is focused on enabling personal diagnostic testing – anytime, anywhere. By integrating engineering and proprietary chemistries, Drawbridge is developing a people-friendly system for collecting and stabilizing blood samples, opening new doors to enable access to important health information. At Drawbridge Health, we’re innovating new ways to put health in your hands. For more information, please visit www.drawbridgehealth.com.

About GE Ventures

GE Ventures identifies, scales and accelerates ideas that will help make the world work better. Focused on the areas of software, advanced manufacturing, energy and healthcare, GE Ventures combines equity investing, new business creation, licensing and technology transfer to deliver an innovation platform designed to drive growth for partners and GE. For more information, please visit www.geventures.com or follow on Twitter (@GE_Ventures) and LinkedIn.