The FT US Healthcare and Life Sciences Summit in New York, now in its sixth successful year, will bring together industry leaders from across the healthcare and life sciences continuum to explore the major transformations ahead. Peter Keeling, CEO of Diaceutics, will be speaking at the May 2017 event on Leveraging diagnostics and analytics (Dx) to boost therapy return on investment - a 360° review.
With over $200bn of drug revenue already shaped by diagnostics and 70 per cent of future pipelines biomarker enabled, the dependence of the future pharma business model on integrating diagnostics is no longer in question. However, this throws into sharp focus the readiness of the industry to understand and optimize the clinical diagnostic ecosystem underpinning every therapy launch.
The question is no longer “Which patients tested positive for a targeted therapy choice?” but rather “How many of the right patients were not tested and missed the treatment opportunity?”
It’s a subject that has long been a concern for Diaceutics, and we have regularly assessed the introduction of diagnostics earlier in the patient journey with the underlying message that not only will more patients get directed to the right treatment but that financial returns will be significantly boosted by such diagnostic investment. In one of our regular Expert Insights, Diagnostics are a Driver, Not a Cost, Keeling uses the example of how Merck invested in a genetic test for KRAS mutations performed on cancer tissue before starting treatment, in order to support its targeted therapy, Erbitux, and direct more patients to the drug.
It’s not only the initial investment in diagnostics that could prove rewarding for patients and pharma alike. With its global network of laboratories and its position as a leading provider of lab analytics and tracking, Diaceutics is perfectly placed to see where testing can be optimized in that setting. In an Expert Insight on data-powered decision-making in personalized medicine, we discuss how with CML, inter-laboratory variation in BCR-ABL1 to control gene ratios is widely recognized. We then ask, “How many patients are NOT tested consistently in the same lab?”, and are able to calculate ‘the potential financial values to companies in the TKI space of proactively reducing inter-laboratory variability in a chronic cancer’. The costs are modest but the financial benefits are significant.
So the theme, enhanced by our latest data and understanding of the diagnostic space, is developed at the FT Summit. The briefing will quantify the missed treatment opportunity based on real-time, real world US testing data, and discuss the readiness of the Pharma industry to radically improve patient testing in support of improving outcomes and accessing higher return on precision medicine investments.
