HealthPartners Institute receives $3.2M grant from National Cancer Institute to create and study new tool that will improve care for patients with genetic risk of cancer
The project, which leverages HealthPartnersmyGenetics community research database, will help primary careclinicians provide the latest screening recommendations to patientswith inherited breast, ovarian and colon cancer risks
About 1 million people in the United States have certain genesthat significantly increase their risk of breast, ovarian and coloncancers. But it’s challenging for patients to be confident they arereceiving recommended cancer screenings because guidelinesfrequently change as the medical community learns more about how toreduce the risk these genes confer.
HealthPartners Institute is working to change that with a $3.2million grant from the National Cancer Institute. Its researcherswill create a clinical decision support tool that will help careteams and patients with known genetic risks keep up to date withthe latest cancer prevention and screening recommendations. Thegoal is to prevent cancers or catch cancers earlier to improveclinical outcomes and quality of life.
“Screening recommendations for these patients are quite a bitdifferent than the screening recommendations for the generalpopulation, and they frequently change, which makes it challengingfor patients and primary care teams to stay up-to-date with currentrecommendations,” said Dr. Patrick O’Connor, senior researchinvestigator with HealthPartners Institute and lead researcher onthe project. “We’re creating a tool that uses a variety ofalgorithms to identify current recommendations for each patient andhelp primary care teams provide these patients with the mostup-to-date screenings.”
Clinical decision support: How it works
The clinical decision support tool will be embedded in theelectronic health record. It will alert clinicians to patients whoalready have been found to have high inherited risk of breast,ovarian or colon cancer through the myGenetics program or othergenetic screening. The decision support tool will remind eachpatient and their primary care clinician about the recommendedtreatment options that may reduce each patient’s risk ofdisease.
HealthPartners Institute has a long history of creatingsuccessful clinical decision support tools for other conditionslike hypertension, diabetes and kidney disease. Its WizardCDS tool has been used in more than 9 million visits on more that 2million patients across multiple health systems in the country andhas been shown to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease by morethan 10 percent.
The new NCI-funded cancer screening study will involve 40clinics across the HealthPartners system. Twenty clinics will berandomized to use the tool, while the other 20 clinics will receivethe tool 18 months later. Researchers will then determine whetherthe tool increased appropriate screening and cancer prevention careamong at-risk patients, and how patients and care teams like usingthe tool.
Making precision medicine actionable
Medical researchers have made significant discoveries in recentyears about the relationship between genes, lifestyle behaviors,and disease risk. This interplay is called precision medicine andit’s already improving the way patients and their clinicians canidentify, prevent and treat a variety of diseases.
However, this increasingly sophisticated ability to preciselyquantify health risk and create tailored prevention and treatmentplans will require new ways of organizing and presenting data sothat it’s useful for care teams and easily understood bypatients.
“When you look at the advances that are happening in the fieldof precision medicine, it’s truly impressive,” said O’Connor. “Butthere is a risk of information overload. That’s why we’re creatinga system to help organize these data in a way that’s clear topatients so they can make informed decisions about treatmentoptions that may be of benefit to them.”
myGenetics milestone
In May 2022, HealthPartners and genomics company Helix launchedmyGenetics, a voluntary, no-cost community health research programdesigned to help participants learn if they are at risk for heartdisease, hereditary breast and ovarian cancer and certain types ofcolorectal cancer. Additionally, its vision was to create agenetics research database involving a large, diverse populationthat could be used to tailor healthcare and improve outcomes forseveral inherited conditions.
Since then more than 39,000 have enrolled to better understandtheir health, family history and support groundbreaking researchthat will improve care for everyone. This NCI-funded study marksthe first federally funded research that leverages these data toimprove care. Because the tool will be useful for patients whoalready know they are living with inherited risk factors,researchers hope it will spur enrollment in the genetics program –particularly among patients from diverse backgrounds who are lesslikely to be up to date on some cancer screenings.
To enroll in myGenetics, visitHealthPartners.com/mygenetics.
About HealthPartners Institute
HealthPartners Institute is part of HealthPartners, a nonprofitorganization with a mission of improving health and well-being inpartnership with its members, patients and community.HealthPartners Institute supports this mission through research andeducation—advancing care delivery and public health around theglobe. The Institute annually conducts more than 350 researchstudies and trains 700+ medical residents and fellows and 1,200+medical and advanced practice students. Its integration withHealthPartners’ hospitals, clinics and health plan strengthens theInstitute’s ability to discover and develop evidence-basedsolutions and translate them into practice. Visithealthpartnersinstitute.org for more information.
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David Martinson, 763-218-7721
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david.p.martinson@healthpartners.com
