To Jonathan Hirsch, founder and president of cloud-based decision support software vendor Syapse, using genomic data along with clinical and other data at the point of care is an inevitable next step in the evolution of clinical practices.
However, combining genetic information with other information and making it available to clinicians is not a native capability of major electronic health record systems. "Everyone's looking for that tab in [their EHR], and it doesn't exist," says Mr. Hirsch. "The systems just don't support that complexity."
Enter Syapse, an EHR-agnostic clinical decision support platform that brings patients' genetic information into the EHR interface. "Other companies focus on compiling bits of the picture, bringing together raw data, but not working on the end goal of how to put that information in front of the clinicians," says Mr. Hirsch. "What makes us different is we're focusing on bringing genomic and other information to the point of care within the current clinical software ecosystem."
The goal is to use available genetic information in tandem with information already in the patient's EHR to provide a more comprehensive picture of the patient and inform more evidence-based, personalized treatment options.
One of Syapse's first major provider partners is Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare. Under a new partnership, Intermountain will incorporate the Syapse platform into the system's new Cerner EHR system to improve cancer treatment throughout its 22 hospitals. "The software enables the development of precise and personalized treatment plans based on a person's history and their genomic information," says Mr. Hirsch. "It also tracks treatment fidelity over time, and can do cost and outcome tracking," allowing the health system to identify the most efficient treatment options for its patients.
The software is currently live in Intermountain's southwest region and is rolling out now across the health system. Because the software is cloud-based, the health system is able to offer it to outside oncologists. Mr. Hirsch says Lincoln D. Nadauld, MD, PhD, Intermountain's director of cancer genomics, believes bringing genomic information together with clinical data and other patient information from within the health system would have been very difficult to pull together without Syapse. "And doing it beyond their walls would have been impossible," says Mr. Hirsch.
With the boost of $10 million in recent Series B funding, Syapse is positioning itself to enter into more big-system partnerships like it has with Intermountain, and to continue helping providers find the best treatment options for some of the most prevalent and costly conditions.
"Providers are going to keep doing whatever is necessary to figure out the optimal outcome for the lowest cost and as quickly as possible," says Mr. Hirsch. "We're already seeing this in the communities we're working with… they're using this molecular information to drive better outcomes."
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