Interview: An evolving career in personalized medicine: an interview with Dr Paul Billings

Paul Billings speaks to Tarryn Greenberg, Managing Commissioning Editor

Board certified internist and clinical geneticist Dr Paul R Billings serves as Chief Medical Officer of Life Technologies Corporation, a new position aimed at improving patient care through expanding the use of medically relevant genomic technologies in clinical settings. Dr Billings brings extensive expertise and healthcare experience in the areas of genomics and molecular medicine. Most recently, he served as Director and Chief Scientific Officer of the Genomic Medicine Institute at El Camino Hospital (CA, USA), the largest community hospital in the Silicon Valley. He was a member of the US Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Advisory Committee on Genetics, Health and Society. He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the US FDA, the Genomic Medicine Advisory Committee at the Department of Veterans Affairs and the IOM Roundtable on Genomics. Dr Billings has had a distinguished career as a physician and researcher. He has been a founder or chief executive officer of companies involved in genetic and diagnostic medicine, including GeneSage, Omicia and CELLective Dx Corporation. Previously, he was Senior Vice President for corporate development at Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings (LabCorp). He has held academic appointments at some of the most prestigious universities in the USA, including Harvard Medical School, UC San Francisco (CA, USA), Stanford University School of Medicine (CA, USA) and UC Berkeley (CA, USA), and has served as a physician at a number of prominent medical centers. He is the author of nearly 200 publications and books on experimental and clinical medicine. His work on genetic discrimination was instrumental in the creation and passage of the federal Genetic Information Non-Discrimination Act of 2008. Dr Billings holds an MD from Harvard Medical School (MA, USA) and a PhD in immunology, also from Harvard University. Dr Billings is a long time Board Member and has previously served as Board Chair, of the Council for Responsible Genetics.