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Does targeting therapy based on a patient’s genes actually help improve health? How about a hospital’s bottom line?
That cost question, in particular, will inform how precision medicine is adopted in health systems across the country, said Dr. David Flockhart, director of the Indiana Institute for Personalized Medicine.
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He’s part of a coalition of Indiana-based researchers that is evaluating what pharmacogenetic testing does for clinical outcomes – and for health care costs. The effort’s led by Indianapolis-based hospital system Eskenazi Health, but joined by the Indiana Institute for Personalized Medicine, the Indiana University School of Medicine and the Regenstrief Institute.
“Pharmacogenetic testing isn’t rocket science, and it’s not expensive, either,” Flockhart said. He said these genetic tests can be done in-house, and run the same cost as an X-ray – about $250 to $300. The aim of this study is to show hospital administrators whether or not precision medicine is scalable.
It’s been long understood that some patients can’t metabolize codeine, or don’t respond well to statins. The science exists to suss out the genetic cause of these discrepancies, Flockhart said. But there still hasn’t been a hands-on analysis of the economics of precision medicine.
“Our thought was to really get through the log jam of putting this into the clinic,” Flockhart said. “There’s been a lot of science, but nobody has addressed the most important question about precision medicine – will this work?”
The two-year study, launched last month, will enroll 6,000 patients, with 2,000 enrolled in the pharmacogenetic testing. The remaining 4,000 will be a control set that will be monitored, but not genetically tested. It will review whether the genetic analysis of a patient with hypertension, diabetes or heart disease helps choose the better medication – and lead to better health.
The study will also target 33 drugs -ranging from statins to psychiatric drugs – to see if there’s a significant association with reducing hospital and outpatient costs over the course of a year.
This project, called the INGenious (Indiana Genomics Implementation: An Opportunity for the Under Served) study, is part of an NIH pilot program called IGNITE that has received more than $11 million in funding.
