Kathleen Lokay: Incorporating the Latest Research and Supporting Physicians

Committees for Via Oncology meet frequently to update pathway platforms and support the growing needs of physicians, according to Kathleen Lokay.

Transcript

How frequently are your pathways platforms updated to reflect the latest research developments in oncology, especially in the context of using diagnostic tests?

Our medical oncology committees actually meet the most frequently of all. Radiation and surgical oncology don’t meet as often because there’s not as much data changing. But the medical oncology committees meet every quarter. There’s just that much going on in oncology. Then if there is something groundbreaking in between a meeting the committees can always call an ad hoc meeting. So we really want to make sure that we’re addressing new data frequently and that we really keep the pathways up to speed and that new data includes diagnostic tests. So we will be incorporating new biomarkers in virtually every meeting as new data comes out.

Is there anything Via Oncology is thinking about doing next that physicians are looking for?

The thing that we don’t have so much now is precision medicine in the sense of things that are not really standardized care. So if it’s not standardized care, we historical don’t put it in the pathways but we’re increasingly getting our practices asking us to help them with those places where they’re doing genomic sequencing and wanting support for that and wanting to then have their results then be matched with their clinical trials. So it’s stepping outside of what has historically been a more standardized healthcare pathway into something more researched but something that is clearly becoming a bigger and bigger part of practice.