Looking Ahead: Precision Medicine Solutions Hold Increasing Promise for Healthcare Businesses

Precision medicine encompasses a broad spectrum of technologies, sciences, and programs that emphasize tailoring medicine to the individual. These capabilities can empower clinicians to optimize treatment pathways and drastically improve patient outcomes, but the healthcare industry’s adoption of precision medicine technology has historically lagged.

Joe Spinelli, chief strategy officer of Aranscia, shares his predictions on how precision medicine tools will become more widely adopted in 2024 and beyond and explains what it takes for organizations to implement these programs successfully.

How is precision medicine evolving and in which areas of healthcare will it be most utilized in 2024?

This is an exciting time for precision medicine, as some of the more foundational work that’s been done over the past several decades in genomics, diagnostics, and artificial intelligence is finding meaningful applications in population health, rare disease treatments, and oncology. The evolutions the healthcare industry is experiencing now are less about the core/novel methodologies and have more to do with the effective practical utilization of those methodologies at scale across the spectrum of care.

What are some of the biggest, most recent healthcare hurdles precision medicine can help mitigate?

The evolution of precision medicine involves two distinct yet equally important initiatives: the development of innovative technologies and therapies to improve care on an individualized basis, as well as the effective utilization of those innovations within clinical care settings. Democratizing access to these types of precision medicine solutions through technology and workflow implementation will be a key factor in the clinical and economic success of these programs.

How will precision medicine solutions benefit providers from a business perspective this year?

As more care cohorts are attached to value-based initiatives and/or care models, multi-step processes of candidate identification, intervention, and outcomes tracking become increasingly important for care organizations and vendors alike to align on. In addition, companion diagnostic and biomarker programs will help providers and payers better align the cost and appropriate therapeutic use of innovative offerings.

How are healthcare organizations shifting their approaches to more personalized care and treatment? 

Organizations on the whole continue to make moves up the curve of precision medicine enlightenment.  In some settings, this means that both clinical and technical resources are now finally identifying the challenges from existing “point solution” approaches and improving the reach and impact of innovative precision programs. Programs that have long been stuck in the walled gardens that consist of static data, PDFs, paper-based (!) workflows, or a low number of internal SMEs are being replaced or augmented in favor of democratized programs that extend the benefits of precision medicine across the entire care environment.

Do you expect to see precision medicine become a more standardized, widely embraced part of healthcare in 2024?

Absolutely. Multiple provider surveys have identified that precision medicine, and specifically, personalized medication management programs utilizing pharmacogenomics (PGx), are overwhelmingly recognized as beneficial to their care workflows. Yet only a small minority of providers feel they are adequately equipped in both knowledge and utilities to ensure these program benefits are accessible to all patients. As more data supports the economic and clinical benefits of these programs, it has brought a growing awareness, improved standardization, and expanding payer coverage that will see more patients than ever reap the benefits of PGx programs.

What should healthcare providers look for in a precision medicine solution? Anything they should avoid?

There are three important words to keep in mind: workflow, workflow, and workflow. People, process, and integration complexities are often the barriers to precision medicine program success, so providers should continue to seek out solution partners who bring a truly consultative approach to the utilization of their platform offerings, both before and after the program’s go-live. Precision medicine vendors who remain in the “widget” business do so at their own peril.