During a recent Uber ride, Madhuri Hegde’s driver asked her what she did for a living. The chief scientific officer for laboratory services at PerkinElmer, she prepared to bore him with a description of the tests her company had developed—most recently to flag serious genetic disorders. Instead, he was intrigued. “Where can I get one of those?” he asked. For years, PerkinElmer has only offered that clinical test to doctors.

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