Precision Medicine and Health IT: New Data, New Challenges

Precision medicine (PM) is slowly entering the mainstream of health and medical discourse but is still a term in need of concise definition to move beyond the origins in genomics to the present, where PM must also encompass population health management.

The most effective manner to build a bridge between past and present is to define PM as an “effort to collect, integrate, and analyze multiple sources of genetic and non-genetic data and applying data analytics and machine learning/AI to develop insights about health and disease that are tailored to an individual.”

-Kadijah Ferryman and Mikaela Pitcan in What is Precision Medicine?

This report discusses the broader definition of precision medicine, including the topics of pharmacogenomics, genotyping/sequencing, microbiomics, and radiomics & digital pathology. After introducing the various -omics data now being collected for PM purposes, the report looks at how EHRs and other health IT platforms are currently integrating this information (or not) and what major hurdles continue to limit the possibility of more broad implementation of precision medicine strategies.

The report goes on to discuss the role of new initiatives and technology that are intended to accelerate, or at least support, the continued adoption of precision medicine techniques in the provision of care. It closes with a series of seven vendor profiles and a brief list of other vendors to watch in the space.