Foundation Medicine Enters Partnership With Epic to Integrate Genomic Insights into EMR Systems

On August 26th, Foundation Medicine (FMI) announced that it has partnered with Wisconsin-based Epic Systems to integrate its comprehensive genomic profiling (CGP) and other testing services with the latter’s electronic medical records (EMR) system.

The integration, which is expected to be available from next year, would enable all providers who use Epic to electronically order FMI’s products within the Epic network. The partnership intends to provide healthcare providers easy access to clinical and genomic information in one integrated system.

“In order to bring the reality of precision medicine to more cancer patients, we need to simplify the process for getting oncologists access to the genomic insights they need for targeted treatment planning,” said Dr. Kathleen Kaa, Interim Chief Commercial Officer, FMI, in a statement.

Speaking to GeneOnline, Dr. Kaa said, “We always have a long-term focus to bring innovations forward and advance treatments, but we have also realized that patient information must be within the workflow and easily accessible for physicians. So without just stopping at producing reports, we want to make sure information is readily available to aid decision making”.

Currently, FMI offers two FDA-approved tests, FoundationOne CDx, a tissue-based broad companion diagnostic for solid tumors, and FoundationOne Liquid CDx, a liquid biopsy test. So far, FoundationOne CDx has been authorized for more than 20 targeted therapies, and FoundationOne Liquid CDx has bagged nine FDA approvals for targeted therapies across four cancer types.

FMI’s Focus on EMR Partnerships

With the rising number of sophisticated medical technologies, patient care has gradually gravitated towards precision health. But, these advances also mean that a typical patient will be evaluated more often, leading to expanding medical records.

As a result, Physicians have to spend more time organizing and understanding data than engage in active patient care. In recent times, electronic medical records have significantly impacted the quality of patient care, with more physicians opting for it.

Epic Systems, America’s largest electronic health record (EHR) company, stores medical records of close to 62% of the population. Its EMR system, Epic, is used by more than 450 customers in the US. Adopting an integrated EMR system provides several advantages, including patient participation and easy data sharing between hospitals.

This is FMI’s second partnership with an EMR system this year. Earlier in June, the company announced a first-of-its-kind integration of genomic profiling with Flatiron Health’s OncoEMR platform to enable widespread access to its CGP tests.

“By closely working with our customers, we have learned that practice-changing technologies must not just be actionable and of high quality, but it must also be easy. We have spent years on science and research to advance our products, but these partnerships allow us to focus on how to make it accessible, fast, and part of the workflow.” Dr. Kaa said.

“Besides, making the data fast and accessible for clinical decisions, we are happy that patients can now be confident that all their information is in one place,” she added.

Author

Rajaneesh K. Gopinath