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Rob Metcalf, left, and Mark Harris of NextGxDx, now Concert Genetics

Lee Steffen

Say goodbye to NextGxDx and hello to Concert Genetics.

The buzzy Nashville-area health-tech company, a high-profile graduate of the city's original startup accelerator, has rebranded. The name change reflects the company's effort to bring a broader pool of stakeholders including clinicians, labs and, increasingly, health plans together (in "concert" as it were) to move genetic testing and precision medicine forward.

Rob Metcalf, left, and Mark Harris of NextGxDx, now Concert Genetics

Lee Steffen

"We've had the name NextGxDx for seven years now," Mark Harris, founder and chief innovation of the genetic-testing marketplace company, said in an exclusive interview. "I think it served its purpose well."

The company formerly known as NextGxDx, which offers a variety of tools to increase "transparency and efficiency in genetic testing," as described in a news release, was founded by Harris in 2010. The company went through accelerator-turned-investment fund Jumpstart Foundry, and is often cited as one of the program's most successful graduates and one of the area's most promising health-tech ventures.

Now called Concert Genetics, the firm offers a searchable database of genetic tests for clinicians, along with products providing information and transparency around genetic testing to hospitals and health insurers.

Last summer, Harris gave up the CEO title at the young company. Rob Metcalf, formerly president of white-hot Franklin-based cognitive computing company Digital Reasoning, took over the top executive spot a little more than seven months ago, around which time the name-change conversation began.

"We started more or less when I came on board," Metcalf said, explaining that he early on asked Harris if he'd consider a name that captured the "broader impact" of the company's work.

The name "NextGxDx" was meant to reflect the way the company represented "the next step in genomics and diagnostics," Harris said. But in the years since the company was founded, he continued, the market for precision medicine tools has grown and the company has broadened its customer base, most notably to include insurers, spurring the change.

Still, Metcalf said, the team "didn't really set out to change the name."

"We set out to figure out the strategy for growing the business," he said.

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This well-known health-tech company has a new name - Nashville Business Journal