Healthcare magazine for research scientists, labs, pathologists, hospitals, cancer centers, physicians and biopharma companies providing news articles, expert interviews and videos about molecular diagnostics in precision medicine
Issue link: https://clinicalomics.epubxp.com/i/737817
44 Clinical OMICs November/December 2016 www.clinicalomics.com Two large healthcare systems are partnering to offer what they said will be the nation's largest community-based precision medicine program. Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) said their Precision Medicine Alliance will ini- tially focus on advanced diagnostic tumor profiling in cancer treatment, then expand later into areas that include cancer and cardiovascular risk, and pharmaco- genomics. The Alliance plans to establish a database it said will become the largest collection of clinical cancer data ever compiled by one organization, and integrate electronic medical records into a data-management infrastructure allowing quick access to clinical expertise and clinical trial information. Dignity Health and CHI also plan to partner with lab- oratories and bioinformatics companies nationwide to develop molecular tests specific to patient and clinician needs. "Providing precision medicine decision support tools to our physicians so they can provide comprehensive cancer care to their patients in their communities is a task that will benefit immensely if we work together," Manoja Ratnayake Lecamwasam, Ph.D., executive director of intellectual property and strategic innovation at Dignity Health, told Clinical OMICs. She said Dignity Health and CHI can share internal pre- cision medicine and clinical expertise and best practices. Other partnering advantages, she said, include: • Serving a larger population of underserved patients by combining geographically separate regions. • Sharing expenses such as infrastructure and operations costs. • Benefiting from better pricing for tests and analytics tools. • Aggregating a larger pool of data, which the alliance reasons will offer better outcomes and insights into serving patients and physicians—as well as greater opportunities to conduct collaborative research. "Potentially, we may have substantial outcomes data that can show the benefit of precision medicine treat- ments in patient care, and we can share those results with payors to support better reimbursement of preci- sion medicine tests," Dr. Lecamwasam said. For tumor profiling, she added, Dignity Health and CHI oncologists and pathologists will choose service providers from among "a marketplace of best in class players." "Some may already be serving our organizations and others maybe players that would be beneficial to our patients that we would want to pull into the program," Dr. Lecamwasam said.—Alex Philippidis Precision Medicine In a deal that seeks to integrate the delivery to doctors of diagnostic imag- ing and medical data such as genomic profiles, digital pathology workflow company Inspirata recently acquired Boston-based Precision Medicine Network and its core clinical decision support product Crosswalk Insight: Oncology. " The rapid pace of discovery and change in cancer diagnosis and care has created a pervasive knowledge gaps between what is possible and what is actually available for precision diagnosis and personalized treatment inside a healthcare system," said Mark Boguski, M.D., Ph.D., CMO of Preci- sion Medicine Network. Crosswalk will be integrated with Inspirata's Digital Pathology Cockpit, which provides sin- gle-sign-on access to all of a patient's institution-based diagnostic data, including whole slide images. Inspirata CEO Satish Sanan noted that adding Crosswalk will give clinicians a more comprehensive view of a patient's med- ical condition. "The Crosswalk platform positions our Digital Pathology Cock- pit to bridge the gap between ana- tomic pathology and a patient's tumor genes, molecular pathways, matching drugs and relevant drug trials that they may be eligible for," he said. n Inspirata Acquires Precision Medicine Network Healthcare Systems Partner to Provide Personalized Medicine