Molecular testing company Caris Life Sciences announced today a partnership with cancer-focused technology company Flatiron Health to integrate the ordering and delivery of results of its oncology molecular tests with Flatiron’s OncoEMR, a cloud-based electronic medical record.
By integrating with OncoEMR, Caris will extend the reach of its molecular profiling product portfolio to more than 2,000 clinicians in the Flatiron Health operating network comprising more than 800 cancer care centers across the U.S.
“The integration with OncoEMR is another milestone achievement along our goal of making personalized precision healthcare accessible to as many physicians and patients as possible,” said David Spetzler, president and CSO of Caris. “Delivering critical molecular results directly at the point of care in community oncology settings is paramount to every patient’s ability to fight, and hopefully beat cancer. Integrating within the OncoEMR platform, which reaches almost 40 percent of all U.S. community oncologists, significantly aids in delivering on our commitment.”
Once the integration is complete, users will be able to order Caris testing services directly from within OncoEMR. It will also track orders and deliver the testing results directly to the cloud-base platform. The integration of molecular results solves a continuing problem in healthcare—that of providing clinicians with direct access to patient-specific genomic data within the same environment clinicians use to develop patient care plans, potentially saving clinicians valuable time. Flatiron will make the integration with Caris available to all of its network oncology practices that want it free of charge.
“Insight into tumor biology enables precision medicine, and this Molecular Profiling Integration with Caris allows oncologists and their teams to efficiently order molecular profiling tests, track order status and view results, all without leaving OncoEMR,” said James Hamrick, vice president Clinical Oncology at Flatiron Health. “Simplifying the workflow can promote appropriate and equitable testing, eliminate redundant tests, minimize practice disruption, and surface therapeutic opportunities with the goal of better patient outcomes.”
The integration makes Caris’ entire portfolio of molecular profiling services, including whole-exome and whole-transcriptome sequencing on OncoEMR, and the company notes it is the only company to integrate this service with Flatiron’s tool.
Caris said it will continue to work with EMR vendors to find new ways to integrate its molecular profiling information directly into patients’ electronic records as way to enhance patient care and education.
In June of this year, Caris announced it would to integrate its testing portfolio with the Orders and Results Anywhere (ORA) network of the market leading EMR vender Epic. This follows on an earlier Epic Genomics Module integration. Caris has also completed similar integrations with EMR vendors MEDITECH, Cerner, and practice Fusion, among others.
