No, absolutely not. All of our interpretations are made independently according to the Sherloc guidelines, and we don’t take into account other labs’ interpretations in any way whatsoever. This does occasionally lead to different interpretations of the same variant, and there are many reasons why this could occur.
To understand why this occurs so it can be minimized in the future, we are active participants in an NIH-funded project focused on examining reasons for varied interpretations. Learn more about our efforts here.
We are also transparent about what evidence goes into our interpretations and what additional information we would need for a more definitive classification. and have open dialogues with other clinical laboratories to help resolve any differences.
We are one of the leading submitters to ClinVar, in part because we do not rely on previously existing interpretations. Review our ClinVar submissions here.