NEW YORK – Sanford Health has contracted with Color to help expand and augment Sanford's Imagenetics clinical genomics program, the genomic testing company said Friday.
Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based Sanford Health will implement Color's population health genetics program and adopt several of the Burlingame, California-based firm's digital health tools in hopes of increasing adoption, strengthening patient engagement, and improving clinical reporting for patients in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. The partners expect to launch these enhancements by the end of March.
Specifically, Color will migrate Imaginetics to next-generation sequencing from the current array-based testing. The vendor said that it also will provide a better online patient interface with the program to help individuals enroll in Imagenetics, understand test results, and communicate with their physicians about their health.
On the back end, the partnership will accelerate the integration of genomic information into Sanford Health's electronic health record and into clinician workflows.
"Color has helped implement many large-scale genomics and precision health programs, but we are particularly thrilled to partner with Sanford and the Imagenetics program as they accelerate access to genomics in routine care," Color CEO Othman Laraki said in a statement. "Sanford is thinking about how to fundamentally change care delivery through genomics, and together with Color, has a model that other health systems will follow."
Sanford Health Imagenetics, a molecular diagnostic laboratory, dates to 2014, after the health system received a $125 million gift from philanthropist Denny Sanford to establish a clinical genomics program.
With 44 hospitals, 1,400 physicians, and more than 200 Good Samaritan Society senior care locations in 26 states and nine countries, Sanford Health calls itself the largest not-for-profit rural healthcare system in the US.