Identifying the business/technology issues and solutions for making clinical genomics standard of care – with a call to action
About This Blog
Grant Wood has 18 years of experience designing and leading the development of computer systems that support healthcare providers and researchers in advancing and delivering genomic-based clinical care. Working with a broad range of stakeholders in clinical genomics throughout his career, Grant has a comprehensive understanding of the pieces that go into successfully implementing and advancing clinical genomics in patient care.
You are invited to join Grant on his journey as he shares his experience, knowledge, opinions, and solutions to issues surrounding making clinical genomics standard of care. You are encouraged to participate in the calls to action to help move this forward.
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Background
As a child, I dreamed of becoming a doctor when I grew up. In my freshman year at the University, I was told that achieving straight A’s in my undergraduate studies was necessary for acceptance into medical school. As a result, after receiving a B in my freshman chemistry class, I decided to switch to an engineering major, starting with mechanical, then electrical, and finally to computer engineering.
Because my father was a hospital CEO throughout his career, I found opportunities to apply my computer engineering skills in the healthcare industry. After working in the field for 10 years, I was offered the chance to help build a clinical genomics program from scratch at a major healthcare system. Over the next 17 years, I worked with a wide range of stakeholders in clinical genomics, including healthcare providers, genetic counselors, pharmacists, ancillary providers, laboratories, medical informaticists, bioinformaticists, commercial computer application vendors, academic researchers, informatics and bioinformatics students, health insurance payors, lawyers, politicians, government regulators, policymakers, data standardization organizations, both common and rare disease organizations, peer-reviewed scientific publications, and the news media. This gave me a deep understanding of the entire ecosystem and how all the pieces fit together.
Based on what I’ve experienced in this field, I have developed my own ideas about how to move forward in achieving the full and complete adoption of clinical genomics. All of my opinions are my own and are not influenced by conflicts of interest or external parties. In this blog, I will present an issue, propose a solution, and make a call to action to work together to solve it. The same method will be followed for a long list of issues and solutions that will be posted over time.
To help this blog reach its true value, reader participation will be asked for time and again. With the plan to cover a lot of ground, we expect people from many stakeholder groups to find something here where they can contribute.