CCST's Personalized Healthcare Information Technology (pHIT) Task Force has assembled a panel of clinical oncologists as part of its pilot study to develop a scalable prototype healthcare decision support system designed to integrate de-identified patient records with genetic/ genomic test results. This system will be built upon an expertly developed personalized clinical ontology for breast cancer patients and integrated with an existing electronic medical record (EMR) system designed to support decision making by the health care provider and individual patient.

The Task Force opted to select breast cancer as the target disease as at least two genetic/ genomic tests are currently used by physicians as standard of care. The Ontology Development Panel has been convened to work with the study's data management partner, CentriHealth, in building out the decision support model.

Emerging genetic/genomic tests and diagnostic tools provide new opportunities for truly personalized medicine. Information technology resources such as clinical decision support systems can facilitate meaningful use of genetic and genomic information in the course of patient care.

The pilot study retrospectively evaluates de-identified breast cancer patient records (from CalPERS via Anthem Blue Cross (Well Point)), and genetic/genomic test results provided by Genomic Health, Inc. and Myriad Genetic Laboratories, Inc., integrating them in a decision support IT platform provided by CentriHealth.

Next steps toward full implementation of the one-year pilot project include data integration of the product(s) resulting from ontology development, and system infrastructure development.