Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1194306
17 Executive Briefing Sponsored by: W hen it comes to healthcare, "technology" — in the most general sense of the word — is the holistic, user-customizable lens that an organization's entire clinical team needs to function at the top of their license. It's what healthcare organizations need to perpetuate best practice. And it's table stakes for ensuring patient trust. Innovative technology should be easily accessible for clinical teams to further accelerate their care initiatives. Recently, healthcare improvement company Premier® formed a partnership with InsightRX, which offers a precision dosing platform that creates efficiencies to optimize the cost of and improve patient care. Premier's member engagement manager for clinical surveillance, Daisy Jackson, BSEH, CIC, sat down with Jon Faldasz, PharmD, BCPS and head of clinical applications for InsightRX to discuss all things precision dosing. Daisy Jackson: Why is precision dosing important? Jon Faldasz: Precision dosing is all about getting every patient the right dose. Yes, I realize that this seems like an incredibly simple task. But, the fact is that people come in all shapes and sizes. When pharmaceutical companies develop drugs, they identify a variability in doses that work for different people. However, when it comes time to release them, they often just recommend one or two doses for everyone. When drugs are brought to market, we know the approved doses will fail in some people and be toxic in others. Historically we have accepted this as part of the reality of practicing medicine, we just didn't have the technology to do much more than that. But now technology and healthcare are catching up, and we are finally realizing the capability and potential of offering individualized, precision dosing. We can find a dose for each person that will be effective and non- toxic. This is more than an important development. It is revolutionary. DJ: What challenges do clinicians deal with today? JF: One of the most challenging feelings for a clinician to face is one of helplessness. We all want to do what is best for our patients. When we feel that we can't provide the best care possible, especially when we know that we should be able to provide that care, it is incredibly frustrating. This is the pain many clinicians feel today. We know that because of the one-size-fits-all approach that everyone has just accepted for so long, we will be providing suboptimal and/or toxic therapy to our patients. This is just something that clinicians have accepted as a cost of doing business. Our historical limitations in administering therapy at proper doses meant that we would invariably fail many patients in one of two ways: either not effectively treating their condition or creating adverse effects like bone marrow suppression, renal failure, transplant graft failure and graft-versus-host disease, among others. DJ: What does the latest science tell us? JF: We're at a turning point for precision dosing and science and technology supporting it. MAP-Bayesian forecasting, a mathematical tool that has been around for decades, is finally getting the attention it deserves in the world of precision medicine. Studies have continuously demonstrated that the MAP- Bayesian approach provides the best predictions when it comes to patient-specific dosing. The AAC has published a study concluding that using a clinical decision support tool for therapeutic drug monitoring, coupled with MAP-Bayesian forecasting, works better at getting patients to their therapeutic targets than when clinicians do it on their own. With the breadth of data and the increasing availability of Getting the right dose