1.5 billion women aren't getting regularly tested for dangerous diseases, survey shows

Hologic CEO Stephen MacMillan joins Yahoo Finance's Julie Hyman to discuss why it's important for women to get annual health screenings, plus the outlook for the health care industry.

Video transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Let's talk to the CEO of Hologic now about this index. That's Steve MacMillan, he is joining us now. Steve, obviously, that is quite a remarkable finding. Talk to me about the inception of this index and what you expected to find when you set out to get this research done.

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: Sure, Julie. I can tell you we probably didn't expect to find that a billion women hadn't seen a doctor in the last year. What gave us the interest in doing this is we're basically a women's health company focused on diagnostics and medical technology. And as our team has been looking around the world and looking at policies, we realize there's so much talk about the need for better women's health.

And I think intuitively, we all know women's health is an important issue and we should be doing more-- I think policymakers, everything. What we realize is, why is it not making as much progress? And we know that what gets measured gets done. And so as our team talked more and more, we realized there is not great real data like the data you just provided.

And when you look, all the COVID data right-- we've got all the daily data, everything else, people act upon it. So we thought maybe if we create this index and get data, that can be a catalyst to really move things forward in women's health. And so we partnered with Gallup really about two years ago since they're so good at conducting studies, everything else, and we've effectively created this index where annually, we interviewed over 120,000 people in over 140 languages in 116 countries that will give us-- and we're now just unleashing the first results today-- it gives us that opportunity to start to hopefully plot and take actions going forward.

JULIE HYMAN: And, Steve, just to be clear here on the timing of when you were measuring, because I know that this is a 2020 index-- I mean, presumably, a lot of women weren't going to the doctor last year because of COVID. So just to be clear about when you guys were asking the questions and whether it differed significantly from typical years.

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: Sure. You know, last year just by coincidence was the first year that we conducted the survey. So we are now, actually, in the field conducting it for 2021. And we would certainly hope that we will see more progress. But I think at the end of the day, we'll probably be surprised that the numbers will still be kind of low.

We saw also last year a billion and a half women really had not been tested for what we call sort of the big four-- cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, or sexually transmitted infections. So certainly, that was probably a depressed base. In a way, I think that'll be great if that can be the low point, because then hopefully countries can start to feel like we make progress along the way. And in the long run, it might be a great baseline to have that hopefully will be the worst of what we've seen.

EMILY MCCORMICK: Stephen, this is Emily. I'm wondering, where did you find in your survey the biggest disparities in terms of where women's health care and diagnostics are happening at the lowest rates compared to the global average?

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: Sure. You know, certainly, if you look on a country level basis, the Western European countries tend to overall do the best. And candidly, a lot of South America, Africa on the lagging scale. But you know, even the United States, for example, you know, you want to be careful not to broad stroke it, but we did develop an aggregate index-- or really Gallup developed it-- and the US comes out 26th.

So you know, it's not like-- despite how much money we spend, it's not like we're way up. Now, you see huge disparities between rural versus urban. We certainly see inequities and, you know, a lot of the inequalities that you see in society showing up in terms of different socioeconomic groups and ethnic groups also having differences, and particularly, for example, in the United States, you know, some of the inner cities, big opportunities to improve, but also out in very rural parts of the United States as well. So you see lots of different insights that hopefully we can take meaningful action on.

JULIE HYMAN: Well, that's what I want to pick up on, Steve. What is the action now that you are hoping to take or you're hoping to see taken as a result of seeing this survey?

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: We're hoping and we're starting just starting it to be able to have discussions with, call it, the health ministers of the world and the political leadership in countries to start to really look at some of their policies, and then really partnering with the medical technology or the medical communities-- doctors, everything else-- to get more serious. And we think back to if we start to measure, OK, how many people-- how many women were actually screened for cancer?

You know, one of the data points is that only 12% of the world's women last year were screened for any type of cancer. Now, what we're able to do is each country tends to have guidelines. So let's measure, how are we doing against the guidelines in place? And if we're not measuring up and delivering against those guidelines, what are the barriers? And how can we knock that down?

And you know, I got a question earlier, you know, about what can we do to get women to go visit the doctors-- it's not just the women making a decision to go visit their doctors. It's the whole ecosystem working together to help make that happen.

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, definitely, it's important work. I want to switch gears while I have you and just ask you one question about your broader business, because you guys have really seen a big uptick in your diagnostics from COVID tests, which you all make. But of course, then there was a waning in the testing. Now there appears to be a pickup again as a result of Delta.

That's something that your CFO Carlene Obertan acknowledged at a conference on September 10. Can you give us any more insight into what you guys are seeing in terms of demand for your COVID testing?

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: Sure. I think you always want to be careful to give intra-quarter guidance, but I think it's pretty simple. You know, at the core, our business is about, you know, the women's health, both mammography, diagnostics, and our surgical division. And I'm so proud that our company pivoted and we developed one of the very first COVID tests, molecular tests, that was approved in the United States early last year, and we've shipped to over 50 countries around the world. And it became a big part of our business.

It certainly was waning in the, call it, the April to June quarter of this year-- was down significantly. And frankly, we'd love that business to go away and get back to just our base. Now, certainly, with the rising Delta variant, we've certainly seen in publicly available data an increase in testing that's occurred in August and September. And as one of the leaders in providing COVID tests, that's certainly likely to benefit us as well.

But what's been nice about this wave is our core businesses-- you know, hospitals aren't shutting down the way they did a year ago. So you've really got our core businesses performing well with COVID revenue kind of as a little bit on the top there.

JULIE HYMAN: Right, yes. We'd certainly all like to see the necessity for those tests start to go away. Just one quick follow-up question for you, and that has to do with, I believe, you guys have a COVID flu combo test. Is that correct? Is that going to be on the market and ready for this flu season?

STEPHEN MACMILLAN: Yes, it should be. And you know, I think we basically are producing both that as well as just the straight COVID test depending on what customers want. You know, it feels like right now, more people are concerned about, do I have COVID? And in a normal year, would be concerned about getting the flu-- this year I think as long as somebody doesn't have COVID and they just have the flu, they're going to probably be relieved, even though the flu can also be very serious.

So we're poised to-- whichever tests our customers want-- to be able to provide that. And our scientists and our production people have just been Herculean. When many people are working from home, our teams were showing up every single day to help make these products for the world.