Precision medicine was put on the map when President Barack Obama announced the Precision Medicine Initiative in his State of the Union address, but there is still much to be done to advance the personalized model of care.
Jonathan Sheldon, PhD, global vice president of Oracle Health Sciences, spoke with Forbes about the three most critical developments that must happen for precision medicine's full potential to be realized.
Highlighted below are Dr. Sheldon's three steps, as reported by Forbes.
1. Be prepared to grow. The "scalability bar" needs to be set high to accommodate the expected growth in precision medicine. For instance, many more people will likely join the national research cohort or try genetic testing as testing costs continue to decrease. Additionally, infrastructures need to be built that can scale ever-larger as new technology produces exponentially more genetic data.
2. Create and seek widespread acceptance for data standards. Data sharing (including the sharing of genomic data) and interoperability standards should not only be created for clinical and research purposes, they should be agreed upon by the healthcare and science communities as a whole. Such standards will have to ensure HIPPA-compliance, protect privacy rights and support scientific collaboration, and will likely be regulated by the ONC.
3. Change IT platforms now to support enterprise-grade infrastructure. Precision medicine will necessitate "enterprise-grade" IT platforms that include features such as analytics, security, decision support and traceability. The IT infrastructures will also have to satisfy regulations from Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments and guidance from the FDA on biomarker applications.
Read the full report here.
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