By Giselle Sholler, M.D. 

May 22, 2015 | Contributed Commentary | One of the greatest rewards in my job as a pediatrician and childhood cancer researcher is the knowledge that what I do may help save lives. But you don’t have to be on the front lines of medicine or research to do that.

As genomics and precision medicine become a critical part of cancer care, a partnership between IT and clinicians will bring about the most important advances. Indeed, our ability to use genomic data to find cancer treatments could not have been achieved without the help of IT professionals.

As precision medicine moves from the bench to the bedside in the coming months and years, CIOs will become a key link in the chain of people who help find cures and save lives. If you are a hospital CIO, get your cape ready. The technology is getting cheaper and simpler, and if you take the time to learn what is needed, you can join the ranks of superheroes in the war against suffering and disease.

Bringing Precision to Cancer Treatment 

Precision medicine is the process of using data to precisely diagnose the underlying disease pathway behind the patient’s condition. Genomics is crucial to that precision.  Personalized medicine adds to that knowledge the patient’s unique needs and circumstances and brings the patient and physician together into the decision making process.  The two together give you the ability to identify and deliver effective treatment.

Precision medicine is moving rapidly from the bench to the bedside. While we once diagnosed cancer according to where it occurred (skin, liver, lung, etc.), we now understand that the site of the cancer is less important than the gene mutations that allow it to grow. Understanding those mutations allows us to better match patients and treatments, and we’re seeing rapid progress as a result.

Collaboration between medical professionals, data scientists and technology experts has made precision medicine a reality in patient care. Today we are able to perform genomic sequencing of patient tumors at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in less than two weeks. This provides the data for our analytics team at the NMTRC to determine important targets and pathways involved in our patients’ tumors. This data is presented to our molecular tumor board, a group of physicians who create individualized treatment plans for our children.

Our first study, “Feasibility of implementing molecular-guided therapy for the treatment of patients with relapsed or refractory neuroblastoma,” was recently published in Cancer Medicine. Since this study, technology developed by Dell has helped us advance from RNA expression profiling to DNA and RNA sequencing, providing greater depth of information for each patient. Soon, your clinicians will be using genomics to treat cancer. Soon after that, they’ll be using it to determine the most effective treatments for a wide range of diseases. We need more doctors and more patients to accelerate progress on all these fronts.

Five years ago, when we started, the cost and complexity of the technology was daunting. That’s why we needed help from Dell to make it happen. But the technology is becoming simpler and less expensive. I’m not an expert in the technology, but those who are tell me that you can now use off-the-shelf components with built-in security controls to achieve what is needed. 

Clinicians need access to gene sequencing and the ability to share data and collaborate with other physicians. Meaningful use incentives and regulatory requirements now favor data sharing and collaboration, so the stars are aligning to make this the right time to move forward. As a healthcare CIO you have the unique opportunity to be a hero – to save lives of cancer patients by making the technology available. 

As a physician who wants to see childhood cancers eliminated, I call on you to learn about the technology and make a plan to adopt it.

Giselle Sholler is a pediatric oncologist and chair of the Neuroblastoma and Medulloblastoma Translational Research Consortium (NMTRC). She can be reached at Giselle.SaulnierSholler@helendevoschildrens.org.