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Welltok and IBM Watson Help Centura Health Deliver Personalized Guidance for Consumers Living with Heart Conditions

May 7, 2015

Welltok, developers of the CafeWell Health Optimization Platform, today announced that the Centura Health Heart and Vascular Network is implementing a new consumer engagement solution called CafeWell Concierge, an app powered by IBM Watson. Centura Health, the region’s health care leader, is the first organization to embrace the app and roll it out to consumers who are transitioning back to everyday life after experiencing a heart condition.

Cardiac Biomarker ST2 Proves Far Superior To Galectin-3 In A Head-to-Head Study

October 31, 2013

Critical Diagnostics recently announced that the study, “Head-to-head comparison of two myocardial fibrosis biomarkers for long-term heart failure risk stratification: ST2 vs. Galectin-3”, recently published online in JACC (the Journal of the American College of Cardiology) comparing the company’s novel cardiac biomarker ST2 to Galectin-3 (Gal-3), a biomarker from BG Medicine (NASDAQ: BGMD), found ST2 to be superior.

KineMed Awarded NIH Contract to Identify Biomarkers for Myocardial Fibrosis

October 15, 2013

KineMed, Inc. (www.kinemed.com) recently announced that the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), awarded the company a Phase I SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) contract to develop biomarkers for the detection of early myocardial fibrosis. Biomarkers for myocardial fibrosis will guide disease interventions that block the progression of this disease which is risk factor for heart failure and arrhythmias.

Independent Study: Health Diagnostic Laboratory, Inc. Services Lead to Cost Savings of 23% and Significantly Improved Health Outcomes After Two Years

October 14, 2013

Advanced cardiometabolic testing paired with follow-up health management from Health Diagnostic Laboratory, Inc. has resulted in a 23 percent decrease in a patient’s overall healthcare costs and an improved lipid profile in just two years, according to a new independent study published recently in Population Health Management.

Quintiles’ Study Offers View of How Pre-screening for Personalized Cancer Treatments Would Work

October 3, 2013

How do you match up the appropriate patient with the right drug and implement treatment rapidly? That is a question at the heart of personalized medicine and the focus of a study by Quintiles to develop best practice.

In a study of patients with colorectal cancer, it’s investigating how pre-profiling and genomic sequencing data, including the number of genetic changes that occur, could support physician treatment decisions, including the identification of appropriate clinical trials for patients. The Feasibility study of Biomarker Analysis for Patients with Metastatic Colorectal Cancer is expected to go on for 10 weeks. US Oncology Research is participating in the study and it’s supported by McKesson Specialty Health and the US Oncology Network.

The tumor analysis and assessing the bioanalytic requirements is done in Quintiles labs in Durham, North Carolina. Those observations and assessments are being packaged into a report for physicians.

In a phone interview with Quintiles Chief Medical and Science Officer Jeffrey Spaeder, he said: “Instead of looking at just one biomarker and method of action and determining if the patient is appropriate for inclusion in a study, we are looking at a much larger number of genomic variants and allowing the healthcare provider and patient to make more informed decisions about [which treatment to go forward with.”

It’s about matching FDA-approved therapies, as well as therapies in development that have a specific benefit-risk profile for specific patient populations. Instead of bench to bedside, it’s more like bedside to bench and back again.

Spaeder said: “We have the capabilities to do this appropriately and think it is a new way of providing information to the treatment of patients and clinical research.”

Many groups see the benefit of personalized medicine since, based on our genetic makeup, two people with the same condition are likely to respond better to one treatment than another. But one of the challenges has been how to implement that approach. The Quintiles study represents an important piece of that puzzle.

Source: MedCity News