Quotes on Oncology, Via Forbes, and a Spiraling Helix

Forbes kept a close eye on the annual ASCO meeting in Chicago. On THE MEDICINE SHOW, Forbes’ Matthew Herper provides a précis of a speech by outgoing ASCO President Dr. George Sledge.

Here are my two favorite parts:

“So what happens when, a few years from now, a patient walks into a doctor’s office and hands a physician a memory stick loaded with gigabytes of personal genomic data?” Sledge asks. His answer: the flood of data will help doctors and patients, but things will get “very, very complicated.”

and

…Doctors will need real-time access to clinical data from all practice settings. This in turn will require interoperable databases using common terminology. Health information technology should offer on-the-spot decision support to oncologists and patients facing the increasingly complex tapestry revealed by modern genomics. It should provide individualized, ready access to a clinical trials systems. It should support appropriate coverage and reimbursement for services. And it should aggregate data so that we can learn from every patient’s experience.

What he’s saying, in a nutshell, is that oncologists will need to know science and have access to effective HIT to interpret and act upon the ever-growing pile of info on cancer genetics as it applies to people in general and individual patients. I recommend the full read.

An added perk in the MEDICINE SHOW piece is a terrific, gyrating DNA model courtesy of Wikipedia (@Forbes!).

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For an additional twist (PM, 6/7), turns out Wikipedia offers a mutable Medicine Show of its own.

What goes around…?

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