Improvements in Clinical Cancer Care Associated with Integration of Personalized Medicine.

Background: While adoption of personalized medicine (PM) continues to increase in clinical oncology, there is limited data connecting the level of PM adoption at a given institution to improved clinical outcomes for patients. The purpose of this study was to analyze the correlation between health care providers' scores on a previously described PM integration framework and two outcome measures: the use of targeted therapy and clinical trial enrollment.

Methods: This study was conducted using real-world data (RWD) from the Syapse Learning Health Network (LHN). The PM integration score for six community hospital systems in the LHN was calculated and subsequently correlated with the two outcome measures.

Results: Across six institutions, a strong correlation between PM integration score and targeted therapy use was observed in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (mNSCLC) (R = 0.81), an indication with a significant number of approved targeted agents. Conversely, a strong correlation between PM integration score and clinical trial enrollment was observed in metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) (R = 0.63), an indication with fewer marketed targeted therapies but an active targeted therapy pipeline.

Conclusion: The results in these cases suggest that PM integration is a strong indicator of high-quality care practices for both utilization of targeted therapy in more mature PM indications (e.g., mNSCLC) and clinical trial enrollment in more emerging PM indications (e.g., TNBC).