Great themes emerged at the Harvard Personalized Medicine Conference last week. This is the third year that I’ve attended and there’s a palpable sense of progress. Examples abound on how precise molecular profiling tools are now being used in clinical practice and the potential going forward is huge.
But this transformation is causing a number of new considerations to come into focus. Working in industry, we have to think about what do these opportunities mean for business? Where can we best add value; what parts of medicine are currently underserved? How can we bring industrial and operational strengths to the emerging new paradigm? And how is the regulatory environment likely to change…for therapies and for diagnostics?
The opportunities and the challenges are breathtaking. Contributors spoke of the opportunity for sequencing data integration into the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) and the subsequent effect on medical decision making. And, the emerging Personalized Medicine paradigm should provide opportunity for the sector to make the case of the value of innovation, both clinical and economic. But what will people make of a new generation of EMRs containing contextual individual information across a continuum of patient care…from predisposition, through screening, diagnosis to therapy selection and monitoring.
The audience-sourced data demonstrated how peoples’ acceptance of precision medicine has increased over the years in which the conference has been held. And although oncology still dominates, pharma representatives described case studies in cystic fibrosis and cardiology. Those same pharma contributors acknowledged the absolute necessity for powerful diagnostics to complement the delivery of personalized medicine.
On the first day of the conference, I moderated a session entitled: “Business Models for Genetic Information.” Thought leaders from Siemens, PerkinElmer and Oracle described their companies’ visions for the molecular and digital age.
We had interesting audience feedback. Over 50% of the respondents felt that DNA sequence will become a routine part of an individual’s medical record within the next 10 years. Also interesting was the fact that only about 10% felt that availability of science or technology was the biggest obstacle to the adoption of personalized medicine in the clinic.
We discussed how personalized medicine can become mainstream. This isn’t about enabling personalized medicine for the few, but using technology and scale to deliver to the many. Doing this right not only will benefit patients, but input at the conference from regulators, drug manufacturers, and payors, told us there are a lot of parties interested in the success of this new paradigm.
Making sense of all this data is a real challenge – how to format; how to integrate? Some contributors spoke of a data-driven industry transformation as has happened in other industries – financial services, retail, and communications. The result has been efficiency and transparency and the appearance of new interested parties – such as those capable of integrating workflow and data.
The need for workflow integration will continue to be important as well. There are many players out there making individual contributions – from platforms, to molecular markers, to infrastructure, ordering, fulfillment, billing, and reimbursement. But who should take on the task of integration – which is surely needed if the benefits and efficiencies of personalized medicine are to be realized?
The Age of Personalized Medicine Blog 