NEW YORK (GenomeWeb) – Sunquest Information Systems and Partners Healthcare announced on Thursday a strategic alliance to provide genetic testing workflow capabilities to clinical geneticists and pathologists.
As part of the agreement, Sunquest is investing in GeneInsight, an IT platform company focused on streamlining the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of complex genetic test results. Partners, an integrated healthcare system founded by Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, is a majority shareholder in GeneInsight.
Sunquest said that it shares with Partners the goal of developing a next-generation genomic information system and knowledgebase that will accelerate precision medicine. They are in the middle of a 10-year co-development agreement to improve anatomic pathology and laboratory information systems, and Partners has begun implementing Sunquest as its enterprise pathology platform.
Sunquest and GeneInsight aim to improve healthcare providers and laboratories' understanding of genomic interpretation and to enable the sharing of their knowledge with other institutions globally, Sunquest said. Its investment into GeneInsight "will provide the market with an IT tool kit for implementing and integrating genomics into routine diagnostic workflows," the Tucson, Ariz.-based firm said in a statement.
Sunquest did not disclose the amount of its investment in GeneInsight.
"With this relationship we will be able to bring new genomic knowledge to treating clinicians much more rapidly, advancing the field of personalized medicine and ensuring that our patients, and patients worldwide, will benefit from the most up-to-date genomic information available at the point of care," Partners Chief Academic Officer Anne Klibanski said in a statement.