DIA: Driving Insights to Action

Educating Persons Critical in Personalized Medicine

“We understand we need to educate people wherever they are about the power of personalized medicine,” says Edward Abrahams, President of the Personalized Medicine Coalition, which promotes the understanding and adoption of personalized medicine concepts. “We look forward to the day when patients ask, ‘Is this going to work for me?’ And we look forward to the day when providers can answer that question. It's a great question.”

FDA Payer Communication Guidance Steps Toward Sustainability

FDA released its long-anticipated Communications with Payer Guidance in late 2018. “With rising healthcare costs, it's ever more important for payers to make the right informed decisions about access. From an industry perspective, we have to help them think about the value of the products,” suggests Sissi Pham, Founder and CEO of AESARA, Inc. and the AESARA Foundation. “This new guidance is actually a win for industry, but also a win for payers because now the channel of communication is open.”

Genetic Engineering Transforming Research Ethics

Cell and gene therapy are raising new ethical questions in clinical research and practice. “It will probably be the case that breast cancer, which now affects both wealthy people and poor people, will increasingly be a disease of poor people because wealthy people were able to get rid of the mutation from their families,” suggests Robert Klitzman, Professor of Psychiatry at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and Director of the University’s Bioethics Masters and Certificate Programs. “Is this the kind of world we want, where wealthy people can afford to have better genes?”

Only Big Trust Propels Big Data into Big Discoveries

“Peoples’ data is valuable. We know that researchers want it. And people should be rewarded for sharing it,” suggests Dawn Barry, President and Co-founder of the public benefit corporation LunaPBC. In 2018, LunaPBC launched LunaDNA, a genomic medical research database owned by its community: LunaDNA members share in the platform’s value through ownership shares exchanged for their health data.