Exact Sciences pioneers a new age of cancer detection

Partnering to change the status quo of health screening

As the pioneer of the non-invasive Cologuard® home testing kit (among other trademarked cancer-detection tests), Exact Sciences is at the forefront of innovative screening for colorectal cancer and its genetic markers.

Since its foundation as a tiny startup with 40 employees — and now, as an international company with more than 7,000 on staff — Exact Sciences has relied on Box for secure collaboration. Having worked with the likes of Mayo Clinic, the Exact Sciences R&D team knew Box was the right partner for its rigorous industry demands across its regulated life sciences content.

Life sciences–worthy compliance on a global scale

The Exact Sciences IT team adopted Box with a mission to be a cloud-based company. Mike Jordan, manager of the collaboration tools support team, confirms that “Box helped us achieve this with our content management because of the fact that it’s so readily available. Everyone can access it, we don’t need a VPN connection for it, and it meets guidelines such as GDPR.”

While Exact Sciences was founded in the US, the goal was always to be a global organization. So in addition to meeting US federal regulations, using a content platform that offered international security and compliance was just as critical. Box GxP helps ensure patient data meets regulations and Box Governance helps ensure that content, such as patient data and lab results,  complies with records management policies and regional regulations like GDPR.

Ensuring data stays exactly where it’s supposed to

Exact Sciences now has labs in Germany and must be mindful of data regulations specific to that country and others. Data produced by labs in Germany stays in Germany, thanks to Box Zones. Jordan says, “Box has been instrumental in helping us manage that, so we don’t have to set up data centers in other parts of the world and have to have admins run them.”

Box enables Exact Sciences teams to stay compliant, avoid regulatory issues, and easily retrieve accidentally deleted content, which bolsters the company’s data-loss prevention practices. This capability has been tested in situations where employees have accidentally removed critical files. Jordan confirms, “Because of the processes that we have set up and the data loss prevention we’ve enabled through Box, we were able to quickly restore that information for end users, preventing a catastrophic loss.”

Automating workflows in HR and beyond with Box Relay

 By taking advantage of Box Relay and Box Sign, Jordan’s team has also been able to phase out some of the other technologies they were using and simplify workflows from end to end. This is important, because, as he says, “With users already storing their information in Box, it just makes sense to simplify the process and have it all contained in one area, start to finish.”

For instance, when HR onboards a new employee, an automatic process kicks off to create a Box folder for that employee. Before Box, when teams used on-premises servers, an IT person had to manually set up and create permissions for the employee to access their folder. But Box Relay enables IT to automate this process for new users, saving the HR team time and ensuring consistency in the process.
 

Integrations keep work consistent and productive

Because Box offers so many key integrations, using the Intelligent Content Cloud has made it easy for Exact Sciences’ teams to stay true to the tools employees are already comfortable with. The company uses Microsoft products for a lot of areas of work, including Teams for remote conferencing. With the Box for Microsoft integration,  people can share files quickly while in Teams meetings or chats, which makes work seamless for end users without putting content security at risk.

Other key integrations for Exact Sciences include those with ServiceNow and Cornerstone. As Jordan explains, “With Box having so many great integrations, we’re constantly finding new ones to integrate with — but when we can’t find them, there are API calls to tap into. It’s been a seamless process to tie Box into all the products our people are using on a daily basis.”
 

Saving time and money while meeting the mission

Box has been an integral partner to Exact Sciences as the company has quickly grown from a tiny American startup to a first-of-its-kind global innovator with satellite offices, remote employees, and external partners all over the world (including outside health organizations, universities, and even some patients).

Using Box as an intelligent content management platform has enabled Exact Sciences to simplify workflows and processes, getting  more done faster, and also saving  money by reducing the need for dedicated hardware and the staff to run it. Now, Jordan looks forward to taking advantage of several new Box tools, including Box Hubs and Box AI.

Box Hubs will allow Exact Sciences’ employees and partners to access portals so they can easily find information relevant to their jobs and projects, while still keeping all content subject to the right permissions. And Jordan is excited about integrating Box AI into the organization. He says, “The introduction of Box AI will be a game changer for our users,” enabling employees to summarize long documents, surface important nuggets of information buried within them, and even comb through multiple folders at once to quickly find the information they need.

The top three things Exact Science loves about Box, according to Jordan:

1. Compliance guardrails: “With all the regulatory compliance we have in life sciences, regulation is paramount for us.”

2. Ease of management: “It's so easy to centrally manage. As an admin, we have access to centrally change settings and help users out.”

3. The company itself: “It’s an incredible organization to work with. Their teams could not be more knowledgeable and helpful. They’re always on board to hear about things and help us out. Easily one of our best relationships with an outside vendor.”

 

Box Hubs allows employees to access portals so they can easily find information relevant to their jobs and projects — while still keeping content subject to the right permissions.

— Mike Jordan, Manager of the Collaboration Tools Support team