Telemidicine vendor mistakenly alerts patients about cancer
Company claims all 400 patients were immediately informed about the mistake
June 03, 2023
A cancer test company's telemedicine vendor, Grail Inc, mistakenly sent letters to 400 patients on Friday, suggesting that they may have developed cancer.
According to Reuters, Galleri, the company's premier blood test for cancer diagnosis, is intended to identify more than 50 different cancers before symptoms arise.
"GRAIL has confirmed that the issue was in no way related to or caused by an incorrect Galleri laboratory test result," the company, which is owned by San Diego-based biotechnology company Illumina Inc, told Fox News Digital.
"The incorrect letter from PWNHealth was inadvertently triggered by its software configuration issue, which has now been disabled," they added.
Grail claimed that it had contacted the patients as soon as they became aware of the problem and that no patient health information had been revealed or compromised as a result.
Illumina is presently appealing regulatory orders in the US and EU that urge it to sell Grail after it bypassed regulators to complete its acquisition of the cancer test maker.
According to the FTC, the $7.1 billion transaction would impede innovation and competition in the US market for life-saving cancer testing.
The revolutionary Galleri test would actually "increase the availability, affordability and profitability in the $44-plus billion multi-cancer screening market," according to Illumina, which made this claim in a press release in April.
