Featured content courtesy of the Precision Medicine Podcast®. To subscribe and listen to all three seasons visit: PrecisionMedicinePodcast.com
Bill Bonello, president of NeoGenomics Informatics, and Clynt Taylor, president of Trapelo Health, discuss challenges in precision medicine and how evidence-based technologies can help deliver more appropriate, value-based care to more patients.
As a subtext to the discussion is the recent acquisition of Trapelo Health,creator of clinical decision-making platform Trapelo, by NeoGenomics Informatics, provider of bioinformatics services. This acquisition is aimed at improving access to precision medicine testing and treatment.
When asked about the challenges of implementing precision medicine in a clinical setting, Bonello cites a lack of testing for biomarkers that are currently indicated in guidelines or the latest literature. He gives the example of non-small cell lung cancer in which many patients are candidates for immune checkpoint inhibitors. Bonello says, “However, an immunotherapy isn't always the most appropriate course for a patient. We know that up to 35% of patients with non-small cell lung cancer have actionable genetic mutations and up to 55% of patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer have clinically relevant mutations. Nevertheless, less than 25% of non-small cell lung cancer patients receive testing for all four of the most common biomarkers, which are EGFR, ALK, RS1 and BRAF, and just 7% of patients receive testing for all seven genes that are included in clinical guidelines.”
Why aren’t patients receiving appropriate testing? Bonello explains that 80% of treatment occurs in the community and most community oncologists are seeing a very broad range of cancers, making it next to impossible to keep up with the most current science and even the guidelines. “It's just a tremendous amount of information for those physicians to have to keep up with,” he says.
Taylor agrees with these challenges and notes that Trapelo solves them by curating all the most current published clinical information that supports the appropriate use of testing and treatments and delivers decision support to physicians at the point of care.
Bonello adds that the acquisition of Trapelo Health by NeoGenomics will accelerate access for patients. He says, “We are trying to make clinical decision support for both diagnostic test selection as well as therapies broadly available to oncologists and pathologists across the country, again, with a particular focus on those physicians practicing in the community. Our first step is going to be to incorporate the Trapelo solution into our own online ordering solutions, so that physicians who order directly from NeoGenomics will have the benefit of that guidance.”