Scaling Approved Patient-Centered Therapies: Resolving the Diagnostic Challenge

The pharma pipeline is brimming with ever more personalized therapies — mutation-specific oncologics and therapeutics for rare genetic diseases. This is good for patients: why treat a person with a non-specific drug when a drug specific to their particular disease is available? Unfortunately, many personalized therapies fail to reach their intended patient populations. The reasons aren’t scientific – well-validated tests to make the diagnoses exist. Instead, entrenched prescribing and reimbursement practices mean physicians don’t necessarily know to order the right tests -- and if they do order them, payers aren’t necessarily covering the costs. Absent a solution to the testing crisis — and for patients, biopharmas, and investors it is a crisis — broad adoption of gene-specific medicines will impossible. We’ll examine the current challenges and opportunities to resolve the testing crisis to make personalized medicines a near-term reality.