Jonathan Hirsch: Precision Medicine Is the Future of Value-Based Cancer Care

Precision medicine has demonstrated clinical utility and cost-effectiveness, which is why many believe this approach will be key to value-based cancer care in the future, said Jonathan Hirsch, founder and president of Syapse.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How can physicians use precision medicine to improve outcomes and reduce cost?

Precision medicine, we think, is one of the key elements to helping us all achieve the vision of value-based care. And the reason that I say that is because in a value-based paradigm you prize improved outcomes and you prize cost savings rather than revenue enhancing, and precision medicine is a key way to achieve that.

So we have partnered with Intermountain Healthcare over the past few years on precision oncology initiatives, and this culminated in a study that Intermountain published earlier this year in JOP [Journal of Oncology Practice], which demonstrated an improval in progression-free survival, approximately a doubling in PFS, and a net neutral impact on total cost of care when moving stage IV patients from a standard of care-based approach to a precision medicine approach. Specifically, to genomic profiling of their tumor and targeted therapeutic options, mostly commercially available drugs used on- and off-label.

This approach was dramatic for a health system to demonstrate the clinical utility as well as the cost effectiveness. So we really think that precision medicine is the future of cancer care, and we look forward to democratizing access for many health systems.