Color Health CEO Othman Laraki joins Caroline Hyde to discuss the company’s recent funding and how it will help expand its more than 6,500 Covid-19 testing sites in offices and schools; and to talk about what post-pandemic routine health services should look like away from the centralized health-care model most are used to.
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First of almost 100 million dollars. What are you going to do
with it. I Caroline Hyde thank you for having me on today. Maybe

I’ll start off by just sharing a little bit about what color
actually does. So we are the company that provides essential and

public health care services in the context of where people’s
lives actually happen. And so know over the last couple of years

we’ve been building and deploying services across across the US
in very different settings whether it’s like schools

universities workplaces even. Can you say things like churches.
So now we’re running almost like 7000 either testing or vaccine

sites. And so to your question about well we’re planning on
doing with this fundraise but also just generally in our

operation is that we found is that in general when we’re
thinking about health equity and access to essential health care

services one of the biggest factors in people being able to
access basic health care is the immediacy of access and

simplicity of access. And that’s the big driver for everything
that we do which is to take these essential services and deploy

them in the context of people’s lives. So have you to walk
through a few examples of that if that’s helpful. I’m interested

as you walk through those examples because I know that you’ve
been offering Covid services to the likes of California

Massachusetts the state governments the universities. But
there’s also an awful lot of other places that want to become

closer to all of us. Give us access something you’ve CBS and
think the pharmacies on the High Street.

They want to be able to give me my free shot to be able to walk
in and continue the testing that they’ve currently provided when

they get the vaccines. How are you going to tackle this sort of
a competitive space. Yeah. So I think it’s first of all I think

it’s such a vast and challenging problem that I don’t think
there’s going to be a single way to do it.

But I think one of the things that we have seen time and time
again across different industries is that when you bring

immediacy when you take things closer to people you actually get
an exponential increase in utilization of a very service. And

that’s what happened for example and in retail and e-commerce
and and other services like that. And the way we think about it

is like when you think about like say schoolchildren for example
right now we’re running thousands of both testing and vaccine

sites in schools.
And when you think about how do you serve the school based

community.
The most logical and in low friction place to do that is in

schools.
And so you know the way we think about it is I think it’s going

to there is a there is a place for centralized health care which
is the traditional model we came from. But when we look around

the world and you know as well as other examples of other
industries the ability to take things into the context of

people’s lives and in their communities we believe to be one of
the biggest things we can do for public health. Absolutely. I

mean goodness being able to get my flu shot here and work at
seismic so easy when you’ve got a busy life and trying to CAC my

own kids myself. I’m interested in you know as you look at a
four point six billion dollar valuation now you’re a company

that knows how to pivot. You are doing what was it genetics
genetics testings originally sort of like the competitor. Twenty

three and me. And you pivoted and you pivoted. Well I’m
interested in therefore what how your relationship evolves not

only with companies with governments but also the insurers. Are
you going to be working in lockstep with them. Because what’s so

interesting that Covid is almost we didn’t have to worry about
the insurer. It was the federal government that wanted to put

these things in our arms.
It’s it’s a great question. I think one of the effects of the

Covid crisis obviously it’s been an incredibly challenging
window of time for for all of humanity.

But I think in these times of crises what tends to happen as
well is that it creates a mobilization that moves people out of

the local maximum. And the thing that we’ve seen is that all of
the key stakeholders in health care and in public health have

dramatically changed their approach. Like we’re seeing that with
innovative departments of public health like in California

Massachusetts a number of other states
some of the largest manufacturers in health care kind of

services and supplies like Thermo Fisher Su Keenan and so on
have all taken a very big step up to drive access and immediacy

of these services. And so I think like the. And the other big
thing that’s really changed is our own expectations. Like

through the last couple of years we’ve all seen that it is
possible for us to receive basic services in a way that’s way

more convenient as part of our lives. And I think that
expectation is not going to change is not going to go back. And

I think that is one of the biggest shifts. I think that’s
happened in the entire industry at least for the last like 20

years. And so I think this is going to be a big shift that when
we look back I think a decade from now we’re going to see as one

of the big threshold moments for how we think about public and
population health. And often you are mentioning how you’ve

looked at other countries and seen how perhaps they more
efficiently do things than versus the U.S..

Are you looking at international expansion yourself as well.
So we have in fact actually pre Covid we were doing a fair

amount of non U.S. work but through the Covid crisis there has
been such a huge need locally that that has been the biggest

kind of driver of our own focus just to be able to serve our
community and kind of the the the the country where we’re all of

us
color most are mostly living. But

frankly like the same pattern of using technology to distribute
basic building blocks of health care I think is actually

something that is going to apply in a number of other countries
slightly differently because the the way the finances work will

be different through a single payer system versus not. But the
essence of the distribution through a technology first and high

leverage model I think it’s something that’s actually going to
apply quite globally. So not just in the US.