For entertainment giants such as Netflix and HBO, theres an oft-cited concept known as the last mile.
It refers to the performance bottleneck that can arise in the short, final stretch of cable that links their vast, sophisticated server farms to the humble jack on a subscribers wall.
More than a decade after the immense promise unleashed by the completion of Human Genome Project, precision medicine has struggled with its own last mile. Despite major leaps in the field as a whole, the technical work needed to integrate a patients genomic information into the day-to-day practice of medicine has lagged far behind.
This month, UCSF is unveiling its bridge across that persistent gap.
Kristen McCaleb, PhD, program manager for the UCSF Genomic Medicine Initiative, and Jonathan Hirsch, founder of Syapse. Photo by Elisabeth Fall
Robert Nussbaum, MD, leads the UCSF Genomic Medicine Initiative. Photo by Cindy Chew
Through its Genomic Medicine Initiative (GMI), UCSF has integrated data from a comprehensive cancer genetic testing program into the electronic medical records of patients at the UCSF Medical Center. Not only does it allow for continuity of care with all testing and treatment results tied to the same electronic record, but it also allows physicians and researchers to identify larger patterns in the data that can lead to the development of better treatments which is known as precision medicine.
Many major medical institutions, including UCSF, have long had the science and the technology to generate genomic test results, said Kristen McCaleb, PhD, program manager for the GMI who partnered with the Helen Diller Comprehensive Cancer Center on the project. The problem weve had is a lack of IT infrastructure to return those results to the clinicians who order the tests in a clearly actionable, doctor-friendly format.