Exploiting Information Technology Tools to Advance Personalized Medicine

Can information technology (IT) tools extend the successes they have generated in healthcare overall to the evolving realm of personalized medicine? Yes-based on the demand from consumers for portable and real-time access to health information; the need for patients, physicians, and biopharmaceutical companies to be connected; and the overall desire by governments to explore newer and cost-effective ways to deliver healthcare, IT is indeed a driving force that will push personalized medicine forward. Pharma and diagnostics firms are quickly realizing that new entrants such as electronic/mobile firms and IT companies are interested in capitalizing on healthcare markets. The best approach to creating an efficient system of healthcare delivery using IT tools is to incorporate them into collaborative efforts involving the biopharmaceutical, medical provider, and patient communities.

Questions Answered

• IT has truly revolutionized nearly all industries and is fast taking hold in the life sciences industry through the use of IT tools to build novel diagnostic capabilities, process healthcare data, and deliver personalized medicine. What are some key changes that have enabled the transition of IT into the diagnostics industry? How are digital, electronic, virtual, and mobile technologies used to advance personalized medicine?
• For the first time ever, in February 2011, the FDA cleared a mobile application for use with radiology diagnostics. What does this development mean for mobile health technologies and the use of IT in diagnostics? Are other promising "apps" on their way to obtaining regulatory clearance?
• Technological advances are creating newer ways to collect, analyze, understand, share, and make sense of healthcare data. What are the various ways in which providers are modernizing their practices? What are some of the barriers to adoption?
• Healthcare reform is finally becoming a reality in the United States, and one way in which it is taking shape is through incentives to providers who are willing to adopt processes to digitize health records. What criteria must be met in digitizing health records in order for providers to be rewarded by the government? What are "meaningful use" incentives?

• Healthcare IT terms: electronic health records (EHRs), mobile technology, cloud computing, electronic or digital healthcare, telemedicine, meaningful use incentives, picture archiving and communication system (PACS), computer-assisted diagnosis (CAD), smartphones, clinical decision support (CDS), computer physician order entry (CPOE), bioinformatics.
• Legislation: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
• Company types: pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, devices, software development, telecommunications, video gaming.
• Coverage from other Decision Resources, Inc., products: data from two U.S. physician surveys from Manhattan Research and diagnostic imaging insights from Millennium Research Group.