SOPHiA GENETICS Innovation & Technology Culture

Can you share an example of how you’re using AI in your day-to-day work and what problem it helps you solve?

Like many people, I now use models from the frontier lab companies every day for work and personal purposes. The out-of-the-box capabilities save me significant time in almost everything I do.

But what I’m most excited about lately is the application layer of the AI stack. In other words, using AI models to build custom software and agentic systems for myself, to automate the processes I know well. The AI-native softwares and systems we are building are flexible enough that they also learn over time, getting smarter with each use.

As an example, the strategy team at SOPHiA has used AI to build a sales assistant app that is connected to a rich repository of SOPHiA data, including product specs, sales trainings and even live insights from customer interactions across our channels. Salespeople at SOPHiA can use the app during meetings to get immediate answers to questions. In other words, we’ve agentified the most experienced salesperson at our company and put a digital version of them into the hands of all of our employees.

How has your company supported you in experimenting with AI or building new AI-powered solutions?

At SOPHiA, I believe we are truly cutting-edge in our enterprise AI approach, potentially even in the top percentile in terms of AI efficacy.

I believe our success has come from three places, each of which are unique to SOPHiA.

First, the company has always been extremely diligent about documentation. This is partly due to working in healthcare, but also because we’re a Swiss company that loves precision. In the AI age, proprietary company knowledge is more important than ever. For decades, company knowledge has lived in unopened powerpoints, documents, code repos and manuals. Now, AI converts that unused knowledge into a living tool, accessible by all.

At SOPHiA, we have connected 10,000-plus pages of internal documents and all of our internal systems to Claude. This provides an incredible context window for AI, enabling every employee to access and build upon historic knowledge. 

The second reason is our employees. Because SOPHiA itself is an AI company, roughly 120 of our 400 employees hold PhDs, many in AI/ML. Giving a young, AI-centric workforce a strong foundation has led to great results.

Last, our management team has been very supportive of AI and this driver can’t be understated.

How has working with AI changed the way you think about your own career or future growth?

I believe AI, at its core, removes boundaries. At some point, we’ve all felt like we don’t have the right technical skills, are missing a certain expertise, or just don’t have enough time. AI removes a lot of those constraints and that’s exciting.

At the same time, I sympathize with those affected by AI-related job loss. I think it’s a real issue that needs to be solved urgently by regulators. 

In my career, I will focus on using AI to help companies that are doing good things for the world. At SOPHiA, our mission is to expand access to best-in-class care for cancer patients and those with rare diseases. We are using AI to do that by analyzing data that is impossible to comprehend without advanced analytics and AI tools. In that way, I feel like we use AI internally and externally to make the world a better place.