CHICAGO (GenomeWeb) — A year after gaining US Food and Drug Administration 510(k) clearance for its IntelliSite Pathology Solution, Royal Philips is integrating genomics into that system from the broader IntelliSpace platform. Courtesy of a partnership with Navican, the Dutch conglomerate also has made genomics-based diagnostic and clinical decision support available to community hospitals and oncologists that would not otherwise have precision medicine programs.
The relationship between with Philips and Navican, a genomic testing and analytics company spun out of Utah's Intermountain Healthcare in 2016, dates to July 2017, but implementation of IntelliSpace Genomics integrated with Navican's TheraMap platform is just getting off the ground.
"In the community, you usually do not have access to large-scale genomic analysis and respective data," noted Navican CEO Ingo Chakravarty.
"Precision medicine right now is kind of a cottage industry," added Louis Culot, general manager for genomics at Philips.
Chakravarty said that the integration of IntelliSpace Genomics and TheraMap delivers a comprehensive view of the status of cancer patients in one place, even to community-based oncologists, and helps clinicians make diagnostic and therapeutic decisions. "It becomes an easy-to-use, point-of-care solution that combines Navican's clinical acumen together with the Philips platform," he said.
"We offer TheraMap as an end-to-end service that includes the sequencing work, the clinical decision support, as well as navigation services that allow us to help and assist oncologists and patients to actually get access to the drug that was recommended throughout the process," Chakravarty added.
"Any touch point a physician has with us — whether it is when a test is ordered, whether we put back [results], whether a physician can engage with us for therapy navigation services or questions to our tumor board — the interface in which that is happening is all based and powered through the Philips platform," Chakravarty continued. This helps make the user experience as seamless as possible, he explained.
In a meeting at the 2018 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society annual conference in March in Las Vegas, Culot discussed the lack of integrated diagnostics slowing broad adoption of precision medicine.
"Others only serve the genomics modality," Culot said. IntelliSpace Genomics, he explained, pulls in data from pathology, radiology, oncology, and other related specialties.
IntelliSpace Genomics also integrates with electronic health records and can display population-level data on an adaptive display. "The screen changes as the stage of the disease changes or treatment progresses," Culot said. This, he said, leads to more accurate diagnoses and smarter treatment plans.
A data science platform is "baked in" to IntelliSpace to support machine learning and artificial intelligence, he said. "We look at this as a deep clinical platform for oncology," Culot said.
IntelliSite Pathology Solution, which integrates with the genomics module, was the first FDA clearance for a diagnostic device in digital pathology. It features a whole-slide imaging system that enables the review and interpretation of digital surgical pathology slides prepared from biopsied tissue.
The genomics component of IntelliSpace supports next-generation sequencing — courtesy of a partnership with Illumina — as well as workflow and genome interpretation, Culot said. As a nondiagnostic system, IntelliSpace Genomics is exempt from FDA 510(k) review, but the oncology and pathology parts provide actual diagnostic decision support, according to Culot.
"Philips is on a great trajectory to generate and bring together the broad set of clinical patient data across pathology, as an example, and genomics," Navican's Chakravarty said. "We, as a precision cancer care company, utilize a lot of pathology work."
Navican grew out of the precision oncology program at Intermountain, which the Salt Lake City-based health system has used to offer genetic profiling to all patients with advanced cancer since 2013. Navican raised $15 million in a Series A round last July.
Chakravarty described the journey of a cancer patient, starting with a biopsy or tumor sample. That sample and the subsequent test results reside in pathology laboratories. "As soon as you do genomics, you want to bring these data points together," he said.
Philips and Navican are the vehicles for making that information sharing happen.
"We, together, then provide to an oncologist the respective data so that [they] can make good decisions relative to available therapies, Chakravarty said. "I think the combination of anatomical pathology data and genomics data is what we bring together, and Philips, with their aim and capabilities, is a great partner to facilitate that."