Case Study: MicroGenDX

“Elicit is a step above other tools I've tried. I prefer Elicit when it comes to actually interpreting evidence. It doesn't make things up like ChatGPT.” - James Compagno, Director of Marketing

MicroGenDX is a clinical laboratory that offers microbial diagnostic tests via next-generation DNA sequencing (NGS). The company has over 70 peer-reviewed publications and has processed over 2.5 million molecular samples. To earn regulatory/insurance approval and win physician trust, teams across the company validate NGS’s clinical applications by publishing and citing medical research papers. Since NGS is used across the spectrum of infectious disease, this requires identifying, reviewing, and citing thousands of papers across different medical specialties on a regular basis. 

MicroGenDX augments its traditional keyword literature search and manual paper review with Elicit across its Biostatistics, Medical Affairs, and Marketing teams. This allows MicroGenDX to deeply survey the literature relevant to specialty areas, supporting validation, getting diagnostics to market, and increasing awareness among physicians.

Before Elicit: Throttled by Keyword Search

Three teams at MicroGenDX were bottlenecked by literature review. To earn regulatory, insurance, and physician approval, these teams frequently conduct literature searches to (a) identify studies on NGS’s medical applications and (b) build subject expertise across medical specialties.

Before Elicit, they used traditional keyword search tools like Google Scholar and PubMed, which led to: 

• Missed key papers and research groups: Keyword searches often missed important papers that didn’t precisely keyword-match.
• Delayed publication timelines: Without specialty-specific search keywords, Medical Affairs and Biostatistics teams struggled to surface important papers and communicate with specialist peer reviewers, slowing publication.
• Reduced clinical applications & several wasted days every month: Marketing spent several days each month reviewing keyword-matched papers that didn’t ultimately provide evidence to support clinical applications. 

MicroGenDX knew they needed a solution. They tried ChatGPT, Consensus, other enterprise AI products, and even an in-house tool, but were unsatisfied. Craig Tipton, Director of Biostatistics, said “I didn’t like other AI tools, which required access to our papers and data, and produced subpar output.”

Today: Using Elicit To Accelerate Research, Approvals, and Marketing

Now, MicroGenDX uses Elicit to accelerate and improve the rigor of literature review across teams.

Craig Tipton, Director of Biostatistics at MicroGenDX, saves up to 4 hours per literature review and months on publishing time: “Extra rounds of peer review can translate to papers taking another two, three, four months stuck in the submission process. Elicit helps me provide better answers, potentially avoiding more rounds of rebuttal, and saving months on publishing time”.

He particularly liked that “there is always a paper trail and every output can be traced to an actual paper.”

Nicholas Sanford, Vice President of Medical Affairs, uses Elicit when trying to secure payer coverage for MicroGenDX’s diagnostics. He asks Elicit questions like, “Does NGS demonstrate a likelihood of cost savings for Medicaid programs?”, and incorporates the results into communications with payers.

James Compagno, Director of Marketing, told us “Elicit is a step above other tools I've tried. I prefer Elicit when it comes to finding and interpreting evidence. It doesn't make things up like ChatGPT.”

Tomorrow: Using Elicit to leverage evidence at-scale

Teams at MicroGenDX are excited to find more ways to use Elicit. 

They’re particularly excited to accelerate meta-analyses and systematic reviews, a common use case among other Elicit users. 

Tipton, Director of Biostatistics, said “There are many papers in, for instance, orthopedics, that compare NGS or similar techniques against culture methods on sensitivity specificities for pathogen detection. I would like to use Elicit for a meta-analysis of those papers”. 

Such meta-analyses are viewed as the gold standard of evidence by regulatory bodies and medical associations. By publishing more meta-analyses with Elicit, MicroGenDX aims to expand awareness among physicians about the benefits and applications of NGS diagnostics.

We are grateful to partner with industry-leaders like MicroGenDX to put NGS technology into the hands of more physicians, and improve the lives of their patients.