Precision Medicine (PM) is the new buzz phrase in healthcare. It is a medical model that proposes customized treatments tailored to patient subgroups based on molecular diagnostics, imaging, and analytics to make medical decisions and adapt treatment practices and products to individuals. Precision Medicine moves us from a “one size fits all” approach for disease treatment to very targeted and specific therapies for the individual patient.
Precision Medicine relies on the clinical laboratory for test results and data. Diagnostic laboratory results help match the patient to specific therapies. Results and data are used to target and customize treatments for oncology patients to decrease toxicity of drug therapies, help providers determine when and how to use radiation therapy, and to specifically target clinical trial protocols to patients based on genetic test results and tumor marker test results. Analysis of specific result data helps clinicians to improve patient outcomes and researchers to improve future treatment protocols.
In 2019, CNN published a story with a tag line; “All breast cancer patients should get genetic testing, surgeon says.” This was a sign to the public that healthcare was evolving. Advances in precision cancer treatment has created an explosion of new cancer tests performed in clinical laboratories across the country. New targeted treatments for cancers have led to the requirement of companion diagnostic tests. DNA signaling pathways are an example of such testing. Onco-signaling can identify 13-15 key pathways to measure and match against treatment therapies. Biomarker cancer panels are now offered by many new or growing genomics laboratories or are being added to large high complexity lab test compendiums.
This individual data by itself is limited in its use. The data becomes extremely valuable when it can be used by researchers and clinical providers to monitor patient progress in the medical chart. The data becomes an invaluable tool to predict future patient needs and outcomes by utilizing graphs and charts of the result data from selected groups of patients over time.
Unfortunately, much of this data today is not discrete electronic data that can be easily exported for clinicians and researchers. Much of the data sits locked on pdf forms in electronic medical records, laboratory systems, or in data repositories with no way to match to other repositories. Also, patient confidentiality needs to be maintained when compiling large data sets.
Extract Systems offers an automated software solution, HealthyData, that can unlock this information and deliver discrete electronic data to an EMR, EHR, LIS, DMS, and other applications. Extract Systems specializes in the automation of data extraction, redaction, document classification, data indexing, etc.
Please reach out if you’d like to learn more or see a demonstration of how our software can help you unlock your discrete data.
About the Author: Sherie Christel-Schuster, MT (ASCP)
Sherie is a Laboratory Business Development Manager at Extract with a Bachelor of Science from UW-Madison in Medical Technology. She specializes in customer service, problem solving, and optimizing operations in the laboratory for more than 30 years