A Medical Device Daily

Two Arizona-based philanthropic organizations have committed $45 million to fund an initiative to develop personalized molecular diagnostics. The ability to diagnose and treat disease based on every person’s unique physiological makeup is critical to enabling physicians to improve health outcomes while at the same time reducing medical costs.

Under the Partnership for Personalized Medicine, The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust has committed $35 million and the Flinn Foundation has granted $10 million to bring together a wide range of resources to advance a global personalized medicine initiative.

Dr. Lee Hartwell, 2001 Nobel laureate and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center (Seattle), has been recruited to lead this effort. The Hutchinson Center is a leader in using molecular diagnostics for the early detection and clinical management of cancer and other diseases. In addition to his current position as president and director of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, he will chair the Partnership executive committee, which includes Dr. George Poste, director of the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University (Tempe), and Dr. Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen; Phoenix).

“It is a tremendous opportunity for me to be a part of this new model for improving health while reducing healthcare costs that is being funded by the Piper and Flinn foundations,” Hartwell said. “The collaboration between TGen, the Biodesign Institute at ASU, other institutions in Arizona and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center brings together enormous expertise to tackle major challenges in bringing new science and technology to disease management.”

The cornerstone of the Partnership is the creation of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics that draws upon the scientific strengths of two of the state’s leading bioscience entities, TGen and the Biodesign Institute at ASU, each of which will contribute significant laboratory space to the effort.

According to John Murphy, president/CEO of the Flinn Foundation, biomarker discovery and diagnostic development could ultimately lead to earlier disease detection and more precise disease management. “To leverage Arizona’s institutional assets, the Flinn Foundation’s grant commitment to TGen will link Arizona’s research universities, health care providers, research institutes and industry partners throughout the state to support the collection and storage of biospecimens and drive Arizona-centric demonstration projects,” Murphy said.

Approximately 50% of the Flinn Fund for Arizona Proteomics Research will be available to promote research collaborations to leverage the state’s significant institutional resources in this field, Murphy added, with the balance supporting the creation of a high-throughput proteomics production facility.

In other grants news:

• InforMedix Holdings (Rockville, Maryland), a provider of technology-based solutions focused on improving medication adherence and patients’ overall health status, reported that the Aetna Foundation, the independent charitable and philanthropic arm of Aetna, Hartford, Connecticut), has funded a study at the University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS; Philadelphia) utilizing InforMedix’s Med-eMonitor System in patients with high risk of stroke and bleeding complications.

The Med-eMonitor is an interactive “smart pillbox” that is intended to enable patients to manage complex medication regimens and chronic illnesses at home.

Impressed by the preliminary results of the program thus far, the Aetna Foundation said it has committed to expand both the number of patients enrolled from twenty to one hundred and the length of the program from three months to six months.

This rewards-based program uses incentives including a lottery system to reward patients who adhere properly to their medications and has already successfully enrolled and treated patients who are currently taking anticoagulant medication. This medication is used to prevent blood clots from forming in the body that cause life-threatening strokes and pulmonary embolism. Taking too little medication results in increased incidence of stroke and pulmonary embolism, while taking too much medication may cause life-threatening excessive bleeding.

In contracts news:

• American Medical Alert Corp. (AMAC; Oceanside, New York) reported that it has executed a contract based on its bid award from the City of New York, Human Resources Administration (HRA) to continue providing personal emergency response services (PERS) to Medicaid home care clients.

The contract term is two years, with two options to renew in favor of HRA for two additional two year terms. Based on an annual caseload of about 7,000, the six year value of the contract exceeds $14 million.

PERS is provided to eligible Medicaid clients in the five boroughs as an enhancement to traditional home care services under HRA’s Home Care Services Program.

Under the program, qualified seniors receive AMAC’s premium product offering which includes a two-way voice console unit, a lightweight, wireless activator which can be conveniently worn around the neck, wrist or attached to a belt, a dedicated bathroom activator and monitored smoke detector. When the system is activated, the console unit immediately dials a toll-free number to AMAC’s National 24/7 Response Center and opens a two-way voice link between the senior and trained monitoring personnel to identify the nature of the call and dispatch appropriate assistance as necessary.