Gioia Althoff
VP Genomics, SOPHiA Genetics
House M.D. is my guilty pleasure – it’s hard not to love watching a good medical mystery solved by grouchy genius Dr Gregory House approaching diseases like a detective.
Now consider the show from a patient’s point of view; imagine the pain, anxiety, and uncertainty they experience when faced with the disease, under the care of real-world doctors who sometimes don’t have all the answers.
Cancer has been one of the biggest mysteries of our time; it’s unpredictable, ever-evolving and difficult to solve. Medical practitioners need all the help they can get to tackle this disease.
So, what if we had the technology to make the cancer journey less burdensome for everyone involved?
Starting with genomics to pinpoint mutations
Data-driven medicine is key to fighting cancer; its adoption within hospitals helps alleviate the burden of complicated and expensive medical journeys, while providing important benefits to patients.
Starting with the core area of genomics, it allows accurate pinpointing of the specific mutations responsible for cancer to better diagnose patients and support therapeutic decisions.
As Dr House relies on his team, similarly, we at SOPHiA GENETICS understand that collaboration is essential.
However, relying on a sole source of data isn’t enough. To better solve cancer cases – and ultimately save lives – a global approach is necessary.
Clinicians should be able to utilise, manage, and learn from all relevant medical information available to grasp the bigger picture. It goes beyond genomics with radiomics, i.e. the extraction of valuable information from standard medical imaging, such as PET scans and MRI.
Combining multi-modal sources of data could propel our understanding of cancer
Combining genomics and radiomics enables unique capabilities in oncology, providing multidimensional understandings of cancer to improve diagnosis and prognosis, anticipate tumour evolution, identify potential treatment options and monitor treatment efficacy.
As Dr House relies on his team, similarly, we at SOPHiA GENETICS understand that collaboration is essential. Leading the global adoption of data-driven medicine worldwide, we’ve created a community of over 1,000 hospitals. – an expertise that goes beyond the scope of Dr. House’s ward.
Our solution? A global AI knowledge sharing platform
The SOPHiA AI-based platform empowers clinicians to accurately detect specific cancer-related mutations and allow them to share their knowledge globally in a secure way, so that data used to help a patient in London today will benefit another in Manilla tomorrow.
Supporting clinicians in their therapeutic decision-making, it has already supported the diagnosis of over 430,000 patients worldwide.
The power of data-driven medicine is bringing us into a future where we can manage cancer, making the pain, anxiety, and uncertainty of patients’ journeys a thing of the past and House M.D. a historical fiction.
