DANVILLE, Pa., June 13, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
Geisinger Health System announced today it has reached 150,000
participants in its major biobank and DNA sequencing study known as
the MyCode Community Health Initiative.
"This is an important milestone for us and it's only the
beginning," said David H. Ledbetter,
Ph.D., Geisinger executive vice president and chief scientific
officer. "Each and every new participant allows us to perform
research that will help us find new ways to anticipate or identify
sometimes life-threatening medical conditions early and greatly
improve health outcomes."
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, nearly
2 million people in the United
States are at increased risk for adverse health outcomes
because they have genetic mutations which predispose them to one of
just three conditions: breast and ovarian cancers, Lynch syndrome
cancers and hereditary high cholesterol.
These are three key conditions among the total of 27
conditions or diseases that Geisinger is informing MyCode
participants about as a result of the nation's largest genomic
sequencing study.
Launched in January 2014 in
collaboration with the Regeneron Genetics Center, the population
genomics program originally set out to recruit 100,000 new study
participants over five years. That target has been rapidly
surpassed and the goal reset to 250,000.
In the past year, MyCode has increased enrollment and
expanded its reach from Pennsylvania into Geisinger-affiliated
hospitals in New Jersey where, in
only 8 months of operation, over 8,000 participants have already
signed up.
"For me, population health is taking better care of our
patients. But it also means anticipating their medical needs when
we can," said Geisinger President and CEO David T. Feinberg, M.D.
"We're one of the only organizations taking a population
approach to genomics with our MyCode Community Health Initiative.
To me, what we're doing is really anticipatory medicine. It's
coming up with medically actionable genomic results and giving that
information back to our patients. And no one else is doing that on
this scale."
The growing database of information coming out of the
MyCode precision health project represents a boon to current and
future research but it is also providing Geisinger patients with
personalized health care information that is impacting lives and
changing health outcomes.
Geisinger patients who participated in the program have
had cancers detected earlier than they might otherwise have been
and heart disease identified before any clinical symptoms were
present.
Families are discovering possible explanations for medical
events in their family histories and learning to take earlier
pro-active measures for themselves and for their
children.
On the research side, just in the past six months alone
important scientific studies resulting from work on MyCode data
have been published in major national journals, including
Science and the New England Journal of Medicine
(NEJM).
One recent NEJM study found
people with certain mutations in a gene associated with cholesterol
levels are up to 41 percent less likely to get coronary artery
disease, leading to the potential for life-saving new drugs that
mimic the effect of the mutations.
For more information or to follow the program's progress,
see: go.geisinger.org/mycode.
About Geisinger
Geisinger Health
System is an integrated health services organization widely
recognized for its innovative use of the electronic health record
and the development of innovative care delivery models such as
ProvenHealth Navigator® and ProvenCare®. As one of the nation's
largest health service organizations, Geisinger serves more than 3
million residents throughout 45 counties in central,
south-central and northeast Pennsylvania, and also in southern
New Jersey with the addition of
AtlantiCare, a National Malcolm Baldrige Award recipient. The
physician-led system is comprised of approximately 30,000
employees, including nearly 1,600 employed physicians, 12
hospital campuses, two research centers and a 551,000-member health
plan, all of which leverage an estimated $10.5 billion positive impact on the Pennsylvania and New
Jersey economy. Geisinger has repeatedly garnered
national accolades for integration, quality and service. In
addition to fulfilling its patient care mission, Geisinger has a
long-standing commitment to medical education, research and
community service. For more information,
visit www.geisinger.org, or follow
the latest Geisinger news and more on
Twitter and Facebook.
CONTACT: David
Stellfox, 570-214-6549,
717-810-9673
(c), dbstellfox@geisinger.edu
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SOURCE Geisinger Health System