Visit to Illumina (Verinata Health)

Last day of April 2019. As the era in Japan is about to change from Heisei to Reiwa, Oka from Hiro Clinic NIPT was visiting Illumina (Verinata Health) in California, USA. It takes less than 10 hours by plane from Tokyo to San Francisco. Illumina (Verinata Health) is located near San Francisco International Airport. Here at Verinata Health, samples from Hiro Clinic NIPT are being tested. The beautiful building in the first photo is Illumina (Verinata Health). The reason the outside sign says “Illumina, Inc.” is because Verinata Health is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Illumina. This photo, which looks just like a publicity photo, was taken by Oka. The machine shown in the second photo is a sequencer, and there are seven machines each called HISEQ and NEXTSEQ. This machine is said to be able to test samples from 959 people in a day. The third photo is Oka and Illumina’s manager. The fourth photo is a photo taken with the genetic counselor staff after each meeting. We were also given a tour of the vast grounds, but due to confidentiality, we were not allowed to take any photos. Oka has always been passionate about research on NIPT testing. “It was a very meaningful time for the future development of NIPT testing,” he said passionately.