Personalized Medicine in Cancer Care

The cost of healthcare is increasing at an unsustainable pace, impacting all parts of our economy. New approaches are necessary to reduce costs (or at least significantly slow the pace of growth) and to provide more effective care – better healthcare “outcomes.” Independent of the direction of healthcare reform, these changes will be required by the nation’s leading employers and private national payers. Personalized Medicine will be critical in enabling an evidence-based approach for reducing costs and improving outcomes. Today, Personalized Medicine is largely absent from community health care. The primary focus of KEW is to bring Personalized Medicine to community oncology practices where nearly 80% of cancer patients are treated.

In the United States 1.4 million people will be diagnosed with cancer in 2009 and more than half a million are estimated to die from cancer the same year. Cancer is now ranked as the primary cause of mortality and morbidity in the United States. Cancer is responsible for nearly 10% of all healthcare spending and costs $200 billion annually.

Genetics is transforming the practice of medical oncology. The focus of the 2009 annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) was Personalized Medicine. We can now define many cancers by biochemical pathways and genetic changes. This knowledge supports more accurate diagnoses and selection of the most efficacious therapies to treat cancer. Many pharmaceutical companies have implemented important Personalized Medicine approaches in the development of new drugs. There are several examples of label changes and approvals of drugs based on the genetic composition of individuals and their tumors.

In addition, many drugs currently on the market are therapeutically ineffective or induce drug-related adverse events in subsets of patients. By avoiding ineffective or potentially harmful treatments, and quickly accessing appropriate therapeutics based on genetics of the patient and tumor, we can save time, money, and most importantly, lives. Since cancer care accounts for a large proportion of total healthcare costs, even modest reductions in patient-specific costs can have a major impact on overall national healthcare expenditures.

The importance of implementing Personalized Medicine is recognized at the highest levels of government, industry, and academia. President Obama introduced a Personalized Medicine bill in Congress as a senator. The former Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Mr. Michael Leavitt, and current HHS Secretary Ms. Kathleen Sebelius, both articulated the importance of Personalized Medicine to healthcare reform. Secretary Leavitt championed numerous Personalized Medicine-related programs during his tenure. The new FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, has written about the importance of Personalized Medicine.

Benefits of the KEW Group Approach

Patients, oncologists, payers, employers, pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical companies, diagnostics companies, and investors will all realize substantial value from our approach:

Value for Community Oncologists

We are committed to achieving profitable growth by enhancing current referral relationships, recruiting top clinicians, expanding service lines meaningful to patients, and establishing relationships with payers and self-insured employers. We believe we can substantially increase the number of new patients per physician per year while lowering total operational costs. We further believe our approach creates a model offsetting the current losses in drug margin, diagnostic imaging, and radiation oncology. Together with our evidence-based, state-of-the-art clinical decision support system we believe these changes make KEW practices most attractive to partners, payers, employers, and patients.

Value for Payers & Self-Insured Employers

When genetics, evidence and guidelines are used to consistently and precisely diagnose and treat patients, care is appropriate, efficient and most effective. This is the value that current private payer and employer initiatives and healthcare reform are targeting. We anticipate taking a partnered and leadership role in responsibly and effectively bringing these changes to community oncology.

Value for Therapeutics and Diagnostics Partners

The promise of targeted therapeutics, companion diagnostics, and diagnostic panels for patient stratification and therapeutic response monitoring are great, yet the current evidence suggests that adoption is slow and the process is complicated. KEW Group’s Personalized Medicine platform enables appropriate and rapid adoption of new therapies and diagnostics. Our clinical research, data capture and analytics capabilities will speed patient stratification and recruitment, enable more robust assessment of comparative effectiveness, and accelerate insights into the modern practice of oncology.

Value for Investors

Our approach allows us to be profitable from the outset and cash flow positive quickly. We can bring operational efficiencies and revenue enhancements into the existing and emerging reimbursement environment, while we build the capabilities for a full prospective or bundled payment system complemented by our new clinical research and data service lines. Our combination of deep information technology and operational expertise, practical application of genomics and genetics, and clinical leadership support achieves superior health and financial outcomes.