Healthcare Convergence Seen In New Approach To Cancer Care
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
GuardantHealth and Flatiron Health have teamed up to create a new personalized cancer care platform.
According to Insight, “Far beyond the adoption of EHRs and telehealth capabilities that allow for interoperability and exchange of personal health information (PHI), innovations in health tech are merging into new forms that bring together different types of media and applications. That is convergence in healthcare. Advances in technology now offer both patients and providers with exciting new opportunities to improve patient outcomes, minimize hospital stays, and streamline caregiver costs.”
Convergence in healthcare is occurring on a variety of levels, and is driving the future of healthcare IT.
And now, in one more sign of this convergence, GuardantHealth, a genomics company, has collaborated with health IT and analytics vendor Flatiron Health in order to create a new personalized cancer care platform, according to a news release. The result will be a “proprietary, cloud-based information platform integrating liquid biopsy-based genomic testing with clinical treatment and outcomes data to support the accelerated development of targeted therapies for cancer.”
The new project combines the OncologyCloud analytics engine of Flatiron Health with genomic data on tumors gathered by Guardant Health in order to help researchers develop new therapies. “Today, oncologists and patients are demanding new therapies matched to their underlying tumor genomics to improve cancer treatment,” explained Guardant Health CEO and co-founder Helmy Eltoukhy. “Guardant360 removes the tissue barrier to accessing this genomic information in real-time. When combined with Flatiron Health’s clinical data, this will significantly accelerate timelines for drug development, enabling many new treatment options for millions of cancer patients.”
The platform, which is still nameless, will be HIPAA compliant, marketed not to care providers but to life sciences companies, and should be on the market by the middle of next year.
“Integrating clinical and genomic information has the potential to dramatically improve cancer treatment and advance therapy development,” said Nat Turner, co-founder and chief executive officer, Flatiron Health. “Flatiron Health and Guardant Health’s collective technology, oncology know-how and genomic expertise will deliver an advanced, cloud-based platform to enhance patient care.”