Sunquest Information Systems and Partners HealthCare Announce Strategic Alliance
BOSTON & TUCSON, Ariz.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sunquest Information Systems and Partners HealthCare are establishing a strategic alliance to accelerate genomic-based medicine. The relationship involves a strategic investment by Sunquest into GeneInsight, Inc., an IT platform company that streamlines the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of complex genetic test results. Partners is a majority shareholder in GeneInsight. In addition to the investment, Sunquest and GeneInsight will collaborate on providing seamless genetic testing workflow capabilities to clinical geneticists and pathologists.
Sunquest and Partners have a shared vision for clinical genomics, with the goal of developing a next generation genomic information system and knowledgebase that will speed the advent of precision medicine. “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,” said Anne Klibanski, M.D.,Chief Academic Officer at Partners HealthCare.
Partners HealthCare and Sunquest have a long history of collaboration and are in year five of a ten-year relationship and co-development agreement to enhance the anatomic pathology and laboratory information systems. Partners also recently began implementation of Sunquest as its enterprise pathology platform. “We’ve had a very successful five-year collaboration focused on anatomic pathology and we are looking forward to expanding that model to clinical applications of genomics,” said David Louis, M.D., Pathologist-in-Chief, Massachusetts General Hospital.
As sequencing costs plummet, genetic data is increasingly available to diagnose, treat, and predict disease. Integrating this genetic information into the practice of medicine in a robust and timely manner is challenging. The key to doing so effectively is to reduce the high level of complexity inherent in the genomic interpretation process through the development of tools and infrastructure that enable the clinical community to identify, track and annotate significant findings in real time and at scale. Today, only a small fraction of that data is accessible to researchers and clinicians. The GeneInsight and Sunquest strategy is to enable providers and laboratories alike to maximize their understanding of each and every genomic interpretation and to share this new knowledge with other institutions on a global scale. The investment into GeneInsight and its integration with Sunquest will provide the foundation for these efforts and provide the market with an IT tool kit for implementing and integrating genomics into routine diagnostic workflows.
“There is a need for a single, complete and seamless laboratory information system that combines both a strong genomic IT platform with an anatomic pathology and clinical pathology platform,” said Jeff Golden, M.D., Chairman, Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “This type of technology will enhance utilization of critical clinical information by electronic health records.”
Matthew Hawkins, Sunquest President, added, “This collaboration is perfectly aligned with our product vision and strategy. Sunquest wants to enable precision medicine by delivering solutions to make molecular and genetics-based diagnostics the standard of care, accessible in all clinical labs. We have said all along that our systems must capture, discretely store, and provide decision support on genomic variant data. GeneInsight is built to do exactly that. With GeneInsight and a long term collaboration with Partners, Sunquest is building a next generation genomics system that will reduce the cost and complexity of precision medicine. It is a great example of the innovative way Sunquest is bringing new solutions to our clients.”
Sunquest has a proven track record of bringing innovative solutions to market. Partners HealthCare is a globally recognized, integrated health system, founded by two of the nation’s leading academic medical centers, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. Earlier this year, GeneInsight announced that VariantWire®, a clinical consortium originally piloted in 2013, is now actively sharing data in real time through a “structured crowdsourcing” mechanism. GeneInsight is enabling this secure data sharing and collaboration among participant consortium members and offering clinical laboratories across the U.S and Canada the opportunity to access information to help advance the field of personalized medicine.
Uniting these market innovators will provide a significant opportunity to create a global genomic knowledge sharing network, advancing their shared goal to bring a next generation genomics system to geneticists and clinicians worldwide.
About Sunquest Information Systems
Sunquest is the market leader in the laboratory, delivering diagnostic information technology and outreach solutions designed to fulfill the business objectives of today’s healthcare leaders. Sunquest is committed to providing comprehensive solutions that deliver quality diagnoses, optimize efficiency, improve patient safety, and respond to a changing market. With more than 30 years of experience, Sunquest continues to be the chosen partner for more than 1700 laboratories and over 300,000 end users worldwide. Sunquest serves the global marketplace with reliable technology for mission critical applications, enabling providers to deliver optimal care across their network. Sunquest has redefined the lab, empowering its partners to turn results into knowledge.
About GeneInsight
GeneInsight, Inc. is an IT platform company focused on streamlining the analysis, interpretation, and reporting of complex genetic test results. GeneInsight Suite® was developed by Partners HealthCare in collaboration with leading geneticists, laboratory operations personnel, practicing physicians and IT professionals. GeneInsight has been in clinical use since 2005 and has supported the interpretation and reporting workflow for more than 35,000 clinical genetic tests across multiple diagnostic reference laboratories, including the Partners HealthCare Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. More information can be obtained at http://www.geneinsight.com.
About Partners HealthCare
Partners HealthCare is an integrated health system founded by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. In addition to its two academic medical centers, the Partners system includes community and specialty hospitals, a managed care organization, community health centers, a physician network, home health and long-term care services, and other health-related entities. Partners HealthCare is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Partners HealthCare is a non-profit organization.
