As more healthcare organizations nationwide put precision medicine into practice, the opportunities it brings for disease treatment and prevention are enormous. But the challenges are also very real. Amid efforts to wield precision medicine in the betterment of patient care, organizations will need to examine: 

• The regulatory and reimbursement landscape 
• Technology needs that fit with organizational environments
• Disease management and prevention strategies
• Ethical implications of precision medicine 
• Financing, bootstrapping, and development of necessary technology
• Liquidity of data generated by precision medicine initiatives

Earlier this March at HIMSS18, the industry had a chance to see how healthcare leaders are addressing some of the growing pains behind precision medicine. For some, roadblocks, like interoperability, are all too familiar:

“One thing we have to do as an industry: We have to get out of this phase that we think precision medicine is so special that we can’t work together. There are competitive interests, but we’re in the space now that we actually have to work together.” – Jonathan Hirsch, President, Syapse

Others, first, are facing a rather systemic overhaul: 

"The goal of the precision medicine movement is to give clinicians and patients access to the kinds of information needed to create individually tailored programs to treat a variety of diseases and to ward off those that are preventable. To accomplish those twin goals will require the collection of far more data than clinicians now collect when they evaluate patients. It will require more sophisticated analytic tools to glean meaningful insights from the data collected. And equally important, it will require the public to become more engaged in its own care."

Realizing the Promise of Precision Medicine by Paul Cerrato & John Halamka, MD

To help understand and grapple with these challenges standing before us, Healthcare IT News is calling on community of clinicians, payers, health IT professionals, researchers and academic institutions to share their ideas and lessons learned during the #PrecisionHIT Twitter Chat on April 19 from 12 to 1 p.m. CST. 

⇒ Add Chat to Calendar

April 19 from noon to 1 p.m. CST
Hashtag: #PrecisionHIT
Host: @HealthITNews
Moderator: @SullyHIT
Special Guests: @EMRAnswers, @drnic1 and @innonurse 

Twitter Chat Questions: 

1. What is the biggest opportunity precision medicine presents right now? #PrecisionHIT
2. What are some things patients should think about as precision medicine techniques become more common? #PrecisionHIT
3. What are the key elements of a successful precision medicine program? #PrecisionHIT
4. When will EHRs be ready to handle genomics data and play their part in precision medicine? #PrecisionHIT
5. What role can (or should) artificial intelligence play in the evolution of precision medicine? #PrecisionHIT

We look forward to seeing you on April 19. In the meantime, connect with @HealthITNews and @SullyHIT via the #PrecisionHIT hashtag.