Dive Brief:
- Dignity Health and Catholic Health Initiatives launched the Precision Medicine Alliance to speed diagnosis and treatment protocols using genetic information.
- The program — available at nearly 150 hospitals and care centers across the U.S. — will initially focus on advanced diagnostic tumor profiling in cancer treatment and then expand to other areas like cancer and cardiovascular risk and pharmacogenomics.
- Plans for the alliance also include a large clinical cancer database.
Dive Insight:
With San Francisco-based Dignity Health and CHI, headquartered in Englewood, CO, serving roughly 12 million patients a year, the alliance will be the largest community-based precision medicine program in the country.
The two health systems will partner with laboratories and bioinformatics firms to develop and test molecular tests based on patient’s specific needs. The program will also integrate EHRs into a data management infrastructure for speedy access to clinical expertise and clinical trial data.
Lloyd Dean, president and CEO of Dignity Health, said in a statement that the program “will provide community physicians with access to a wide range of diagnostic technology that is currently only available in academic medical centers.”
The alliance is aligned with President Obama’s $215 million Precision Medicine Initiative, which calls for creating a million person cohort to improve understanding of different diseases and how to treat and prevent them.
A recent report by HIMSS Analytics found few healthcare organizations currently have precision medicine programs or use precision medicine-specific solutions on patients. Of those that do, the majority focus on cancer.