ORLANDO At the Precision Medicine Symposium on Sunday, Intermountains gastrointestinal medical oncology director, Mark Lewis, MD, outlined both the challenges and solutions to cancer treatment.

Our Holy Grail isnt just to treat now, but to anticipate what cancer is going to do, Lewis said, adding, Cancer is a Darwinian nightmare, with millions of cells competing for survival. If we can anticipate the changes, we may be able to get ahead of it.

Lewis opening keynote at Sundays HIMSS17 Precision Medicine Symposium highlighted the results of Intermountains precision medicine program, which has reduced cancer treatment costs and improved patient outcomes. Intermountain Healthcare is located in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Lewis described the patients journey, which begins at Intermountains precision medicine clinic, followed by a biopsy or FFPE and pathology review. The sample is prepped for molecular analytics, and a molecular tumor board creates a personalized treatment. The process should take two weeks or less from patient entry to results.

To take longer than that is truly doing a disservice to patient care, Lewis said. Cancer doesnt wait.

But a single sample cant allow researchers to understand the complete genomic architecture of cancer, Lewis explained. EMRs, and even our own data warehouses, cant compute the volume of genomic data and arent well-suited to the workflow. And there isnt an excellent mechanism for outcome tracking.

Infrastructure of managing genomic data is absent at most institutions, he said. True implementation comes from measurement outcomes and a clinical champion. There needs to be at least one doctor who invests in precision medicine.

Interoperability is also a challenge, as theres no real industry standard. HL7 has made great use of FHIR, but its not yet used in labs.

The only way were going to move the standard of care ahead for cancer is with research, he said. What genomics is helping us do is to be smarter about how we treat cancer.

And precision medicine needs to be a global effort, Lewis explained, and that its also imperative organizations use specialized tools like Syapse, which streamline precision medicine data in EHR clinical workflows.

What were trying to do here is find things that are actionable and make a difference in a patients care, he said.

Intermountain has generated a large pool of data, which can be used to determine the best course of action for each patient. Patients can be matched to conventional therapies or clinical trials.

Having the data is one thing, but being able to act on that information is another thing entirely, Lewis said. This is not an academic exercise: This is trying to better patient care.

This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. VisitDestination HIMSS17for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.

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Precision medicine's Holy Grail: Anticipate cancer's next step - Healthcare IT News