When it comes to medical research and unlocking the mysteries of how our bodies work, our genomes offer extreme insight. Though it was once considered closer to science fiction than science, the field of genomics is leading the charge of precision medicine, offering a customizable and tailored approach to healthcare that has relevancy in prescribing.   

One of the top priorities for healthcare providers is ensuring patient safety. This is, however, becoming difficult to achieve without technology due to the huge amounts of data that medical professionals must sift through. It’s no surprise that clinical decision support systems have now become essential tools in the healthcare industry. They allow healthcare providers to harness the power of big data to deliver value-based care to their patients.  

Pharmacogenetic testing allows you to identify how your patients respond to certain medications by giving you access to their genetic profiles. For example, if you prescribe the same dosage of a particular medicine to different people, they will react differently. Some of them will have an adverse reaction, while others will experience no side effects. By integrating pharmacogenetic testing with clinical decision support, you can provide individualized care to your patients.  

Check out our quick guide below on the role of pharmacogenetic testing in clinical decision support.  

Benefits of Pharmacogenetic Testing in Clinical Decision Support

The prescription rate in the US has been gradually increasing, and in 2020 it was at an all-time high of 84%. While this mode of prescribing medication is highly efficient, it requires you to go through the client’s data to ensure that the prescription won’t have an adverse effect on them. Part of this data includes pharmacogenetics. NewCrop has partnered with Act X to offer clients access to information in pharmacogenomics databases. Here’s how this move will enhance clinical decision support. 

Integration of Genetics into Medical Practice

Clinical decision support systems make genetics a vital part of healthcare provision, allowing you to personalize your medical support. Before you write a prescription for your patients, you’ll be able to check it against their genetic profile to ensure that the medicine will be efficient and have minimal side effects. The beauty of this system is that it covers most of the prescription medications, especially those that are known to have genomic effects. 

For instance, there’s a high chance that a significant portion of your patients do not get any pain relief from codeine due to their genetic makeup. If you blindly prescribe this medication to them, it will have no positive impact. However, with a clinical decision support system, pharmacogenetic testing is included, and your clinicians will receive alerts right at the primary point of care before they make any prescriptions.  

Highlighting Actionable Genetic Medical Risks

People’s genetic makeup often makes them susceptible to serious genetic medical risks, including heart diseases, diabetes, and cancer. For instance, Lynch syndrome is a genetic condition that has a significant lifetime risk of colorectal cancer. It can, however, be detected through a colonoscopy and managed at its early stages.  

With the integration of clinical decision support systems in pharmacogenetic testing, you can easily identify such medical risks and the carrier status. This enables you to prescribe medication that helps manage the underlying condition as well as the genetic medical risk. You’re also able to make diagnoses in a highly specific manner by categorizing diseases based on genetic variations instead of their systems.  

This allows you to prescribe more effective and specific treatments. For example, there are some melanomas with specific mutations that can only be targeted by a particular BRAF-targeting drug. Prescribing typical melanoma treatment will be ineffective and may even increase the prognosis. 

Evidence-Based System

Our clinical decision support system is continually updated with client data and includes relevant references. It’s also evidence-based and evaluates the authenticity of the information to ensure you only use high-quality patient data.  

This system only uses a saliva-based test instead of many small panels that result in unnecessary big data. It acts as a turn-key solution for medical professionals by integrating pharmacogenetic testing and actionable genomics into their medical practice.  

Ease Of Obtaining Patient’s Genetics

Once a patient signs up for genetic testing, a saliva kit is sent to their homes. It’s easy to use; and they only have to give one cc of saliva and then send it to a lab, where it is then sequenced or genotyped. This means that you’ll always have an updated medical profile of your patients and can easily check for any drug-genome interactions before making prescriptions. Genetic analysis often reveals variations that can guide you when prescribing drug dosages. This will ensure that the patient gets the maximum benefits of the medication without experiencing adverse side effects.

Provision of Personalized Medical Care

A one-size-fits-all approach to medical care rarely works because each person’s genetic makeup is different. This is why healthcare provision is shifting to more precise and predictable care that has been personalized to each person’s genetic makeup.  

The integration of pharmacogenetic testing in clinical decision support systems enables you to identify how genomics impacts patient health and drug response. If you’re aware of how certain prescriptions impact a patient, you can enhance disease prevention and make more accurate diagnoses.  

Personalized healthcare provision also allows you to: 

• Customize disease prevention strategies and improve disease detection. 
• Preempt the progression of diseases and predict a patient’s susceptibility to them. 
• Shift medical focus from reaction to prevention. 
• Avoid making drug prescriptions that have predictable side effects. 
• Prescribe highly effective drugs based on a patient’s Pharmacogenetics.  
• Reduce the failure rate of pharmaceutical clinical trials as well as the time and resources invested. 

Personalized care also allows you to eliminate prescription inefficiencies that undermine patient care. 

Enhance Medical Care Provision Through Pharmacogenetic Testing

The high cost of medical care is often due to wrong prescriptions and the failure of patients to adhere to their medication, sometimes due to adverse medical effects. Pharmacogenetic testing gives you access to a client’s genetic profile, including data on how they react to certain medications. This enables you to prescribe highly effective medication with minimal side effects.  

With a clinical decision support system, you can easily retrieve this information before sending electronic prescriptions to your patient’s pharmacy of choice. 

Are you looking for an effective way to provide medical care to your patients? Contact us today to see how NewCrop Rx can help you support your prescribers.