Precision medicine

Actionable insights and intelligent health care experiences lead to personalized care and improved operations for providers.

Helix has closed a $200 million financing round and said it plans to expand its personal genomics marketplace to accelerate consumer adoption of genomics. The San Carlos, California-based startup launched the Helix marketplace in July 2017 to collects and sequence a DNA sample once, and then store and protects a customer’s data so they can access additional DNA-powered products and services from the Helix store without providing another saliva sample. [Also: 23andMe lands $250 million to expand do-it-yourself genetics testing] Helix CEO Robin Thurston said the financing will enable it to expand its health-related product offerings as it competes with other genetics companies, such as 23andMe and AncestryDNA. Thurston added that Helix also works with research partners such as the Healthy Nevada Project on community health projects built on Helix Exome platform. The Helix store includes 35 products from 20 partners and that number is expected to grow to more 50 products in 2018 with major launches including new products from partners such as Mayo Clinic. [Also: Microsoft, Google invest in precision medicine startup DNAnexus] Helix has sealed deals with 47 companies to run tests on the Helix platform. Tests are available for $20 and others cost hundreds of dollars. DFJ Growth, with participation from all its founding investors, which include Illumina, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, Mayo Clinic, Sutter Hill Ventures, and Warburg Pincus, led the funding round. Barry Schuler, Partner at DFJ Growth and former chairman and CEO of America Online, will join the Helix Board of Directors. Twitter: @Bernie_HITN Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

The new partnership aims to enable integration of genomic data across the EHR, making it easier for physicians to order specific tests for personalized medicine.

The technology could enable researchers to test drugs or treatments on a patient’s cells to avoid harmful, ineffective and costly options while determining personalized regimens.

The hospital says the TriNetX network gives its patients the chance to participate in clinical trials they otherwise might not know exist.

Experts will address a range of topics from current challenges to the future vision of precision medicine.

John Halamka and Paul Cerrato sift through the hope and the hype of personally-tailored care, spotlighting to real-world success stories while not ignoring some significant potential pitfalls along the way.

Highlights about the challenges and opportunities of precision medicine at this year’s health IT conference.

Taken together they represent an essential and very different way of thinking about the healthcare business model that exists today.

Columbia University College of Dental Medicine this week announced that it will establish a new Center for Precision Dental Medicine, which will make heavy use of technology to enable data-driven research, advancing understandings about the link between dental and overall health. By applying analytics to multiple data streams, including both medical and dental electronic health records, the center aims to advance education and bring oral health care into the age of precision medicine, officials say. Christian Stohler, Dean of the Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, said the new center will deploy "digital technology and information science to stretch the boundaries of dental research, relating oral care to overall health care, and putting the 'mouth back into the body.'" [Also: Call for speaking proposals: HIMSS Precision Medicine Summit] The school is planning several initiatives over the next two years to help break down some of the longstanding silos between medicine and dentistry –boosting the use of predictive analytics for better disease prevention and helping improve dentistry's standing for the transition to value-based care. "Deep data mining could pave the way for systems of care that continually assimilate new evidence showing which treatments are most effective, offering personalized diagnoses and treatment plans based on thousands of parameters," said Stohler. The College of Dental Medicine will be among the first academic dental institutions to unify dental and medical patient records in Epic electronic health records, officials say – enabling them to be shared among clinicians at Columbia, NewYork-Presbyterian and Weill Cornell Medicine. Physicians and dentists usually work independently of each other, but this integration will offer a two-way flow of information to help caregivers detect and manage interrelated chronic conditions. Dentists are often the first to notice oral conditions that can be related to chronic diseases, such as diabetes and certain cancers. Clinicians will also be able to access some patients’ genomic information – when it's voluntarily shared with the school – to help tailor personalized treatments. Columbia is also aggregating anonymized data from patient visits to help researchers study evidence-based connections between oral and overall health, procedures and outcomes, stress levels and health, among the range of topics, officials say, with the aim of fostering more real-time provider feedback and predictive analytics for precision care. The Center for Precision Dental Medicine also aims to drive improvements in education, through tools such as video cameras, mobile devices and live-streamed real-time procedure data. It will also deploy new dental tools that come equipped with RFID technology to show how procedures are performed for better assessment and faculty feedback. With an eye toward financial and operational efficiencies, it also plans to roll out several new technologies to track instrument and supply use, ensure safety precautions, address patient wait times to helping future dentists better manage costs and improve patient satisfaction. Dentistry is also moving toward value-based reimbursement, officials point out, and predictive analytics and precision-based care will toward those goals. Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com