Addressing disparities in genomic testing, personalized treatment, and outcomes

TheoryLab

Siran Koroukian, PhD, is a leading health policy and health services researcher whose work bridges health equity, big data, public health, and cancer. In her new study—funded through a collaboration between the American Cancer Society and Flatiron Health—Dr. Koroukian will use real world data from Flatiron’s national de-identified oncology datasets curated from electronic health records. Using clinical and genomic data gathered from routine care, she will explore patterns of genomic testing and precision medicine among patients with metastatic colon cancer. With this research she hopes to “unravel new opportunities to improve the quality and equity of cancer care in colorectal cancer patients with metastatic disease, thus informing new interventions to improve cancer outcomes, and lead to a more equitable distribution of scarce healthcare resources.” Siran Koroukian, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences at Case Western Reserve University. She also leads the shared resource on population cancer and analytics within the comprehensive cancer center. And she’s a four-time American Cancer Society grantee. She was recently the recipient of the American Cancer Society Flatiron Health Real-World Data Impact Award to advance patient-centric research. 2:23 – On informed cancer care and management and why it’s important for colorectal cancer patients 4:34 – Current treatment guidelines for colorectal cancer patients with advanced or metastatic disease 10:25 – Why are colorectal cancer patients who are young and healthy but underserved not receiving genomic testing and personalized therapy? 15:18 – On how inefficiencies in the health care system and the overuse of finite health care resources contributes to disparities 19:48 – How her research into Flatiron Health datasets—which include patients of all ages with many kinds of insurance status—will show who is benefiting from precision medicine and who is not… 20:55 – …and how her research could help more patients benefit from precision medicine 23:22 – The impact of ACS funding on her career 26:00 – A message she’d like to share with cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers