Femtech: Bonnie Anderson of PinkDx On How Technology Is Revolutionizing Women’s Health
Authority Magazine Editorial Staff featured on Medium
Asa part of this series, we had the pleasure to interview Bonnie Anderson.
Bonnie Anderson is co-founder, chair, and chief executive officer of PinkDx, a women’s health company working to transform the diagnostic journey in gynecologic cancers. She is a recognized leader in molecular diagnostics with a proven track record of translating genomic science into clinically adopted diagnostics that improve patient care. Previously, Anderson founded Veracyte where she served as president and chief executive officer, led the company from early development through commercialization, helped establish genomic diagnostics that reduced the need for invasive surgery, and changed clinical practice across multiple disease areas. She serves on multiple corporate and nonprofit boards and is widely recognized for advancing patient-centered innovation in diagnostics.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dig in, our readers would like to ’get to know you’. Can you tell us a bit about your background and your backstory?
Assomeone who has spent 40 years in diagnostics, I have tremendous passion for finding unmet needs that can be solved through diagnostics. We hear a lot about investment in treatments, but you don’t start treating someone until they’ve been diagnosed. I’ve always believed diagnostics are where healthcare begins.
I was trained as a clinical laboratory scientist and spent the early part of my career in a teaching hospital before moving into industry. I ultimately spent 18 years with Beckman Coulter, where I had the privilege of launching many different technologies and building new businesses in global markets, sometimes where there simply wasn’t a product to solve an important problem. It was an incredibly rewarding career, and spending that amount of time in a large company taught me structure, process, what works, what doesn’t, and really prepared me to lead and build Veracyte because my career had touched every function we ultimately needed.
When I founded Veracyte, it was little more than a business plan and a conviction that molecular diagnostics could solve important clinical problems. Over the next 15 years, we built the company from the ground up, raised over $1B of capital to bring that vision to life, launched products that reduced unnecessary invasive procedures and changed clinical guidelines, took the company public, completed multiple acquisitions, and expanded the company globally.
Today, I’m the co-founder and CEO of PinkDx, where I’m applying everything I’ve learned over four decades in molecular diagnostics to one of healthcare’s greatest opportunities for innovation — women’s health. It’s a privilege to be able to bring those experiences into what I think of as the second act of my career.
Can you share a story with us about what inspired you to create or get involved in the Femtech industry, and what impact you hope to achieve?
After retiring from Veracyte, my husband and I had a plan to move onto a boat and sail the world together. During the transition to my successor, my husband passed away from COVID.
My next couple of years were spent unwinding from Veracyte and asking myself, “What do I do now?” That really stimulated me to get back out there and see if I could find another meaningful problem to solve.
I decided to focus on women’s health because I thought, If I’m going to leave another legacy beyond Veracyte, it better be in women’s health. I spent a great deal of time talking with physicians, researchers, and leaders at places like Mayo Clinic, and it became evident that gynecologic cancers represented one of the biggest gaps in healthcare. There simply hadn’t been the level of investment or innovation that I’d seen in other areas of medicine.
The more I learned, the more I realized there were many reasons why women’s diagnostics had lagged behind. Women experience pain, hormonal changes, and concerning symptoms throughout their lives, and we’ve always accepted many of those things as just part of being a woman. Breast cancer has rightly received tremendous investment, as well as development in new diagnostics and treatments, but gynecologic conditions have remained far more taboo. You don’t sit around talking about vaginal pain or abnormal bleeding. Those aren’t exactly coffee table conversations.
Historically, many healthcare companies were founded by men, and I think that influenced which problems received the greatest attention and investment. It took someone willing to say, “This is not normal. We’re going to figure out how to solve it, and we’re going to change this world for women in this area.”
That’s the impact I hope to have. I want women to understand that abnormal uterine bleeding is not normal, to feel empowered to seek care, and to receive answers sooner. Hopefully it isn’t cancer, but if it is, we can help identify it earlier. And if it isn’t, we can help women avoid unnecessary invasive procedures. That’s what gets me excited about what we’re doing at PinkDx every day.
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the Femtech field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?
Finding opportunities to improve patient care has always been my north star. I was fortunate to spend 15 years building Veracyte from a business plan into a global leader in molecular diagnostics. We changed patient care guidelines in thyroid cancer and helped demonstrate how diagnostics can transform clinical care. Along the way, I learned that innovation isn’t just about developing great science. It’s about generating clinical evidence, earning physicians’ trust, securing reimbursement, and ultimately changing the standard of care so patients benefit.
Those experiences have shaped how I approach every challenge today. One of the things I’ve had the privilege of doing throughout my career is helping translate molecular science into diagnostics that physicians actually use and patients actually benefit from. At PinkDx, our peer-reviewed research, recently published in the International Journal of Gynecological Cancer, demonstrated that endometrial cancer can be detected from a simple vaginal swab. This is an important step toward bringing the precision diagnostics that have transformed other areas of oncology to women’s health.
If my work has made any contribution to medicine, I hope it’s helping move diagnostics forward in areas where patients have been underserved. Women deserve the same level of scientific innovation that has transformed cancer care elsewhere. If we can help them receive earlier answers, more accurate diagnoses, and ultimately better care, that is a legacy worth leaving.
Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?
It’s hard to pick just one favorite, but one lesson I’ve held onto over the course of my career is to trust your instincts and don’t just follow the crowd. I’ve learned to trust the experience I’ve gained along the way and that sometimes the biggest or loudest trends aren’t necessarily the right direction.
When we started PinkDx, there was a lot of excitement around blood-based testing because everyone believed that if you were going to develop a cancer test, it had to be a blood test. That trend really grew out of success in metastatic cancer, where cancer has already spread and is much easier to detect in the bloodstream. But then the industry started applying that same thinking to early-stage cancer detection. That was always something that I questioned.
At PinkDx, we said we needed to find a sample that’s close to the cancer and that we’re not going to jump on the bandwagon just because everybody else is doing it. Instead, we focused on a vaginal swab because we believed it gave us the best opportunity to detect an endometrial cancer signal.
I think you have to sometimes trust your own instincts to the point where you’re comfortable bucking the trends and going for what you think is right. Solve the problem you believe is worth solving, and don’t be afraid to take a different path if the science tells you it’s the right one.
Can you highlight a particular Femtech innovation that has significantly advanced women’s health and explain its benefits?
One innovation that comes to mind is the detection of HPV and the discovery that it causes the majority of cervical cancers. A respected colleague and friend started this company decades ago and, through years of evidence development, demonstrated that a virus causes this cancer. That work ultimately led to the development of the HPV vaccine, and the result has been a tremendous decline in cervical cancer in many countries. What an incredible contribution this has been to women’s health!
What challenges have you faced in developing or promoting Femtech solutions, and how have you overcome them?
I’ve learned over four decades in diagnostics that this is not for the faint of heart. There are a million challenges along the way. What keeps me going is remembering there’s a patient on the other side of every decision we make, and our job is to help them receive the right diagnosis and the right care.
The way we’ve always approached those challenges is by taking all of our experience and mapping out what we know will be the hurdles to the business right up front. I’m a big believer in building roadmaps, now more than ever at PinkDx, because every company milestone we’re working toward answers an important question, reduces risk, and builds confidence that you’re on the right path.
I often use the analogy of a haystack. In our case, you have a haystack of about 1.7 million women with abnormal uterine bleeding, but only about four or five percent are ultimately diagnosed with endometrial cancer. That’s the needle in the haystack. Rather than trying to build a test that only finds the needle, we thoughtfully decided to move as much of the haystack away as we could and confidently identify the women who don’t have cancer so they can avoid unnecessary invasive procedures and allow physicians to focus on the women who truly need additional evaluation. That approach made the most sense to us, and it’s one of the most important decisions we made early on.
From there, every challenge builds on the next. You have to prove the science. You have to validate that your test performs in the patient population you ultimately want to serve. You have to build the clinical evidence, convince payers that the test should be covered so patients can access it, and bring physicians along with you so they’re confident your test will truly help them practice better medicine.
None of those steps happen overnight, but that’s the nature of diagnostics. If you stay focused on solving an important problem, build the evidence thoughtfully, and never lose sight of the patient, you can overcome those challenges one milestone at a time.
How do you see the future of Femtech evolving in the next five to ten years?
I’m incredibly optimistic about where Femtech is headed over the next five to ten years. The first wave of innovation brought monumental advances in areas like fertility, menopause, and women’s wellness. Those innovations helped normalize conversations that simply weren’t happening before, and I think that’s been really important.
I believe one of the next chapters of Femtech is diagnostics. When I started looking at women’s health, I was honestly surprised by how little innovation had taken place in gynecologic diagnostics compared to other areas of medicine. Precision diagnostics transformed oncology by helping physicians make better decisions for patients, and I believe we’re just beginning to see that same transformation happen in women’s health.
I’m also excited by the convergence of molecular diagnostics, genomics, and artificial intelligence. These technologies have the potential to help us detect disease earlier, identify women who are truly at risk, and move away from a one-size-fits-all approach toward much more personalized care. But technology alone isn’t enough. We have to generate strong clinical evidence, earn physicians’ trust, and demonstrate that these innovations truly improve patient care. That’s how meaningful change happens.
Ultimately, I hope we’ll look back ten years from now and say that women’s diagnostics finally entered its precision medicine era. If we can give women earlier answers, more accurate diagnoses, and less invasive pathways to care, I think we’ll have fundamentally changed the way women’s health is practiced and that’s an incredibly exciting future.
What role do you believe Femtech plays in addressing health disparities and improving access to healthcare for women globally?
I think Femtech has an incredible opportunity to address health disparities because we’re finally shining a light on areas of women’s health that have historically been overlooked. You have to think about equity from the very beginning. You can’t add diversity after the fact. It has to be built into the science, the clinical studies, and ultimately the product itself.
In our case at PinkDx, addressing health disparities is an especially serious matter. Black women are nearly twice as likely as White women to die from endometrial cancer and are more likely to suffer from advanced disease. We intentionally designed our clinical validation study across 16 sites nationwide and worked closely with investigators to enroll a population that reflects the women we ultimately hope to serve, including Black, Hispanic, and other historically underrepresented women. A diagnostic intended for all women must be validated in all women.
Access is another critical part of the equation. One of the things that excited me about developing a vaginal swab is that it’s a simple, minimally invasive test that can easily be in a physician’s office. My hope is that innovations like this can help women receive answers earlier while potentially reducing unnecessary invasive procedures for those who don’t need them.
Finally, I think Femtech is helping normalize conversations that weren’t happening years ago. Women have lived with abnormal bleeding, pelvic pain, and other gynecologic symptoms for far too long, often assuming they were simply something to live with. The more we educate women that these symptoms are not normal and encourage them to seek care, the more likely we are to improve outcomes.
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Ok. Here is the main question of our discussion. Can you please share “5 Things You Need to Create a Highly Successful Career in Femtech”? If you can, kindly share a story or example for each.
Don’t fall in love with the technology. Fall in love with the problem.
Too many companies start with an exciting technology and then try to find a market for it. I’ve always believed you should do the opposite. Start with a meaningful problem that deserves to be solved, then build the science around solving it. That’s exactly how we approached both Veracyte and now PinkDx. We started with an important problem that deserved to be solved and worked backwards to develop the right solution.
2. Build a roadmap before you start the journey.
Innovation doesn’t happen by accident. We spend a lot of time mapping out every hurdle we know we’ll face, from scientific validation and clinical studies to physician adoption, reimbursement, and commercialization. Every milestone answers an important question, reduces risk, and builds confidence that you’re moving in the right direction. That discipline has been incredibly important throughout my career.
3. Surround yourself with exceptional people.
I’ve always believed building a company is a lot like being the maestro of an orchestra. Your job isn’t to be the best violinist or the best cellist. It’s to bring together extraordinary people, align them around a common vision, and help each of them perform at their very best. When everyone understands the mission and trusts one another, remarkable things can happen.
4. Trust your instincts.
Experience matters. When we started PinkDx, everyone was talking about blood-based cancer testing. We stepped back and asked a different question: What’s the best sample to solve this particular problem? We believed a vaginal swab made more scientific sense for endometrial cancer because it was closer to the disease. Sometimes you have to be willing to go against the trend if the science tells you it’s the right path.
5. Have a plan and have a Plan B.
Building a diagnostics company means you’ll face setbacks, unexpected results, and obstacles you never anticipated. I’ve learned the importance of always thinking one step ahead. If Plan A doesn’t work, you need to know what Plan B looks like. Staying focused on the problem you’re trying to solve, and being willing to adapt along the way, is what ultimately allows innovation to succeed.
You are people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
If I could inspire one movement, it would be helping women understand that bleeding after menopause is not normal.
For far too long, many women have assumed that abnormal or postmenopausal bleeding is simply something they have to live with or that it’s just part of getting older. It isn’t. Bleeding should always be evaluated because, in some cases, it is an early sign of endometrial cancer.
One of the things I’ve learned throughout this journey is that awareness is just as important as innovation. We can develop better diagnostics, build better science, and create better tools, but women also need to know when something isn’t right and feel empowered to get answers.
I also hope we continue breaking down the stigma around talking about women’s health. For years, topics like abnormal uterine bleeding and vaginal health simply weren’t discussed openly. But the more we normalize those discussions, the more likely women are to recognize symptoms, seek medical attention earlier, and ultimately receive better care.
Wonderful. We are nearly done. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. :-)
Without question, it would be my mom and my dad. I know the question is often answered with a famous leader, entrepreneur, or innovator, but in my heart, I have to answer it authentically.
I would love for my mom and dad to know that the values they instilled in me — work hard, never give up, pursue your dreams, and believe you can do anything — shaped every part of my life and career. I don’t have a business degree, a PhD, an MD, or an MBA. I earned a bachelor’s degree from a university in the town where I grew up that most people have never heard of. Yet because of the values my parents gave me, I was able to build a career doing work I love and, hopefully, make a meaningful impact on patients’ lives.
It would just be really cool to sit down over breakfast with my mom and dad and tell them, “You were right and that everything you taught me mattered.” The lessons they gave me carried me farther than I ever imagined, and I hope I’ve made them proud.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
You can learn more about PinkDx and our mission to advance women’s health at www.pinkdx.com.
You can also follow PinkDx on LinkedIn and Instagram for updates on our latest research and company news.
This was very meaningful, thank you so much. We wish you only continued success on your great work!
