Without critical data, we will continue fighting cancer with one hand tied behind our back

In this series, we asked speakers at the Milken Institute Global Conference to answer: How does one build a meaningful life in the age of technological disruption? Join the conversation by writing your own article here and including #MIGlobal.

Healthcare, as an industry, is ripe for technological disruption. The potential for positive impact, particularly in the area of cancer care, is both enormous and imminent. In my lifetime, I have witnessed the acceleration of technology, from encyclopedias and typewriters, to the internet and smartphones, but I have never seen anything like what is occurring in biotechnology today. The potential is not only game changing, but also life saving.

Roughly 15 years ago, scientists first mapped the human genome. At the time, this effort cost nearly $1 billion and was useful to the select few that could afford it. Even with limited reach, the earth shook with the promise of a new age of personalized medicine. The past decade has brought unparalleled improvement to the original technology, as the cost of genetic sequencing has fallen over one million fold, making the technology accessible at scale. Yet despite these advances, nearly 600,000 people die every year in the United States alone, subject to treatments that often harm as much as they heal.

Technology advances have given us the ability to collect, store, and analyze massive amounts of molecular data. We need to continue to streamline and lower the cost of genetic sequencing, making it a routine part of care when someone is diagnosed and treated for cancer. But genomic information alone will not provide all the answers. We also need to integrate sequencing data with electronic medical records, which will allow us to gain valuable, life-saving insights from the millions of people that are currently battling the disease. Knowing how patients were treated, and how they responded, in relation to their genetic makeup will provide invaluable insight that is essential to understanding what drives cancer, and why some people respond to conventional therapies and others do not. Without this data, we will continue fighting cancer with one hand tied behind our back.  

We can’t expect physicians to make data driven decisions, when the data they need is either locked in silos, or too expensive to collect in the first place. We have mountains of data, algorithms, cutting-edge analytics, and software in the palm of our hands every day helping us download music, find a restaurant, or figure out the fastest route to wherever we’re headed. And while highly regulated industries, such as healthcare, tend to adopt technology more slowly than non-regulated ones; it is time we bring these same tools to the fight against cancer. 

In a world where finding consensus seems to be more difficult than ever, cancer stands tall as a common enemy. In order to mount an effective battle against cancer, we need to bring together technologists, scientists, and physicians all working toward a common solution; all contributing insight to a collective, frictionless system. Computers aren’t equipped, nor should they be, to make judgement calls on how best to treat a patient. Physicians, on the other hand, aren’t equipped to process the vast amounts of data that are now integral to determining which treatment regime is best for a patient. For the first time in medical history, technology and medicine can be integrated to deliver optimal results. 

With physicians, scientists and engineers working together, we can build technology that will truly revolutionize medicine by integrating millions of molecular profiles with vast troves of clinical data, that encompass both therapy and response. And, if we’re successful, we can finally deliver on the promise of precision medicine; a promise that began 15 years ago at the turn of the millennium when the first human genome was sequenced.