NY Hospital Links DNA Profiles With EMR

New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center has launched a new program designed to link patient DNA to optimal treatments, in which patients consent to DNA sequencing, contact with researchers and longitudinal studies related to data within their EMR.

To date, 25,000 people have signed up to participate in the biobank program, BioMe. BioMe is designed to access a broad range of clinical and environmental information stored in the EMR and link it with genetic information provided by patients.  BioMe also offers doctors the opportunity to give patients more targeted care based on their DNA profile. The program is funded by The Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine at Mount Sinai.

As part of this effort, a team of doctors, genetic scientists and IT experts at Mount Sinai are gradually implementing a new program called CLIPMERGE (Clinical Implementation of Personalized Medicine through Electronic Health Records and Genomics).  CLIPMERGE is using a new tool, developed at Mount Sinai, which gives doctors real-time therapeutic suggestions based on patient genetic profiles. The idea behind these technologies is to link CLIPMERGE and BioMe, bringing up to the moment information on genetic responses to certain medication to the patient bedside.

Right now, real-time feedback on ideal medications based on DNA profiles is available for three conditions related to cardiovascular disease, blood clots and high cholesterol. The idea is that as scientists discover other DNA-specific responses to therapeutics, CLIPMERGE and BioMe will help bring them to practicing physicians quickly.

According to Healthcare IT News, the BioMe databank will include diverse human ancestry, with self-reported 25 percent of African ancestry, 30 percent of European ancestry, 36 percent of Hispanic Latino, and 9 percent of other ancestry.

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

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