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 be impossible. This session will examine the current challenges and opportunities to resolve the testing crisis to make personalized medicines a near-term reality.