July 31, 2018 | Bruce Quinn from Bruce Quinn Associates is featured on this podcast from the Cambridge Healthtech Institute for the Next Generation Diagnostics Summit. Quinn discusses his latest work, challenges to implementing precision medicine, advice for overcoming them, and tips for integrating into the clinic. Here's a sample of the conversation that takes place. Podcast
Cambridge Healthtech Institute: Can you outline what you consider to be some of the greatest obstacles to implementing precision medicine?
Bruce Quinn: I think there are several different major areas in precision medicine and depending which one you're talking about, it changes what the obstacles are. For example, there are some very specific genes that are targets for certain chemotherapies and generally those have a pretty smooth path with payers. You've got FD approved genes, you've FD approved drugs, so payers aren't really the problem or coding. The main issue is getting access to patients. It's having share of mind with clinicians, as they're so busy and as these options proliferate in oncology. For precision oncology, I think often it's keeping physicians up to date and getting things ordered, because once they're ordered we can get them paid for and delivered.
CHI: What advice do you have for people integrating into the clinic?
Quinn: The most important thing that people know now is that it's not just a lab. Just putting a bench top sequencer or a chip assay system in place for pharmacogenetics won't get things done. You have to have a whole runway prepared. That includes things that are pretty far outside the lab, like clinician education and integration with electronic health records or prompting for what test should be ordered next. Just in the last year or two, I think one of the changes is that you hear EHR vendors, like Epic, talking a lot more about making their systems genetics friendly. That's really important. The other thing is, you see that leading institutions are starting to prioritize precision medicine. Geisinger is one, UCS Stanford, University of Chicago, University of Florida, a lot of places. I think we have to get past the era of saying that precision medicine is around the corner and figure out how to make that victory a real thing today.