Diagnosis: Healthy Growth

Dr. Trevor L. Hawkins on leading the new HP 200A organization and the potential for microfluidics technology to disrupt the health and wellness industry.

J global lockdown was a challenge Dr. Trevor L. Hawkins did not see coming, but leading HP’s brand-new health technology group was also an unexpected turn in his long career. After running the Human Genome Project for the US Department of Energy in the 1990s, working at a series of multinational corporations like GE, Philips, and Siemens, and starting and selling his own healthcare diagnostics company, he was content sitting on a few boards and consulting. He thought he was done with corporate life, he says, when HP came calling.

1 / What brought you to HP at this point in your career? It took Glen [Hopkins, then Interim Chief Technology Officer] about four months to convince me to even talk. When we finally had coffee, my eyes were opened to the fact that HP had some very neat technologies, specifically the microfluidics skill sets, that could be applied, potentially, to healthcare. It was the people, the technology, the skills, and the attitude and culture of HP that made me change my mind. I joined as a part-time consultant; that very quickly morphed into being a full-time consultant, and then a full-time employee. And it was really based on the power of the technology.

2 / The famous HP200A (a low distortion audio oscillator) was the first product made in Dave Packard’s garage in Palo Alto in 1939. Why is that your team’s name? Calling it HP 200A was symbolic. It got people excited and inspired to create new breakthroughs. And in many cases, it brought us back to where our founders began. We have people across the company who have literally been doing research and development in their own garages because we were all working from home. Much of our early development was done by people building and testing systems, using 3D printing systems and so on. One of our engineers used a VR headset to turn his garage into a lab so that he could actually experience the environment he was building for. The teams really took on how Hewlett and Packard started this company, and the way in which they have worked and interacted is incredible.

3 / What are some of the big trends shaping the future of health technology? You are going to see the entire health and wellness sector transformed in the coming years. Big shifts were already under way, and they have been accelerated by COVID-19. Diagnostic testing is one example. People want technologies that are simple, easy, and cheap and can be used in different locations. They don’t want to go into a hospital to get a test, and they want to be able to get as many tests as they need. Being able to manufacture at a scale that meets the demand is really important. Then there is the issue of trust. People want their data to be secure and only shared with the right groups that allow them to make the right decisions. All these things will drive entirely new solutions that make testing more distributed, accessible, and consumer-friendly.

4 / How will it change the way testing is done? We see a future where healthcare diagnostics are as pervasive as Starbucks, and there are examples of that already. You can go to a pharmacy and buy over-the-counter diagnostic tests for a growing list of chronic diseases and infectious diseases. Once you have a platform capable of rapid, low-cost, easy-to-use testing, it can be applied to a number of different sectors, such as infectious disease, oncology, and wellness. We also are looking at the emerging area of personalized medicine. There is a growing list of drugs on the market that require

diagnostic tests to determine dosage, or which variant of the drug a patient should be prescribed. We believe that diagnostic testing will enable true precision medicine and improved outcomes.

Traditional health issues are separate from wellness, but people want more information. Twenty years after the human genome was sequenced, we can now look at wellness, metabolism, disease, and longevity using diagnostic testing. You’ll wake up, brush your teeth, and take a wellness test. Based upon the results, you’ll drink a shake that addresses your body’s needs or change your exercise regime.

5 / What are the benefits to patients? We’ve seen the power of telemedicine, but it’s only as good as the information that you give it. If you could run tests that you would normally have to go to the doctor or the hospital for, it would transform that whole experience and change the cost profile. If we can keep people at home so they don’t have to expose themselves to the possibility of infection, or deal with transport or mobility issues, then you really can change people’s quality of life. One of the things that really drives us as a team is the idea that, one day, technology will be able to improve people’s outcomes without them having to leave the house, and at the same time put personal healthcare wellness data under their control.

“ WE BELIEVE THAT DIAGNOSTIC TESTING WILL ENABLE TRUE PRECISION MEDICINE AND IMPROVED OUTCOMES.”

6 / What do you see as future opportunities for HP in these emerging areas? For starters, HP has three big strengths. First, its microfluidics IP—which allows us to manage doses of fluids with incredible precision and speed. This is amazing technology that, historically, has been applied to printing. We believe it has vast

potential applications across many areas of health and wellness, including diagnostics. Second, HP’s manufacturing scale. We ship about three devices per second across our PC and printing businesses, so this is a company that knows how to put products in the hands of people who need them. And third, the strength of our brand. It’s a brand built on trust, and in the world of healthcare with issues around security and privacy, that’s really important.

7/ It’s 2021. Tell us why you are feeling optimistic. I fundamentally believe that we have the ability to really change people’s lives, whether it’s the elderly who can’t leave their home, or reassuring parents that their kids are okay, or making sure the rest of us can physically go to work and travel and get back to some kind of normalcy. The future of health technology—including this idea of a more democratized, distributed, and cost-effective means of diagnostic testing—has the potential to change healthcare in a bigger way than the Human Genome Project did. —Sunshine Flint