Customized therapy for every patient with INTLAB's pharmacogenetics system
Corinna Herrmann
INTLABsupports stakeholders and therapy decision-makers in outpatient and inpatient treatment sectors in using pharmacogenetics to develop a therapy tailored to the genes of the respective patient. In this interview, Dr. Kai Heib, founding partner and Chairman of the Board of Directors at INTLAB, explains how they are using their digital expert system SONOGEN to implement the vision of bringing pharmacogenetics into clinical application and thus making personalized medicine a practical solution.
How would you explain your solution to a healthcare professional in three sentences?
"We see ourselves as a service provider for medical experts who want to recognize the potential of pharmacogenetics and use it for their patients.
For 10 years, we have been committed to making clinical diagnostics and drug therapies safer and more efficient using pharmacogenetics.
SONOGEN is INTLAB's pharmacogenetic expert system with 10 years of European practical application experience across all outpatient and inpatient treatment sectors."
INTLAB solution
What problem motivated you to found the company?
"For us, it was and still is partly incomprehensible why the constantly increasing and evident study situations of pharmacogenetics are not or hardly ever implemented in practice and provide patients and doctors with a relevant benefit in terms of personalized medicine. This is how we came up with the idea of building a pharmacogenetic expert system and making it available to everyone. Because it's time to live personalized medicine instead of just talking about it."
How do you convince a pharmaceutical company, health insurance company, insurance company or other potential customer to set up a pilot project with you?
"Safety: Pharmacogenetics enables personalized drug therapy by taking a patient's individual genetic predisposition into account. This can improve the effectiveness of medication and reduce the risk of undesirable side effects and complications to a relevant extent.
Outcome: By tailoring medication more specifically to the genetic characteristics of a patient, significant improvements can be achieved, leading, for example, to faster therapeutic success, less suffering / better quality of life, less downtime and faster reintegration periods.
Cost savings: By avoiding ineffective trial and error treatments and adverse drug reactions, costs in the healthcare system can be reduced in the long term and waste and the resulting lack of active ingredients can be avoided."
Who are your current customers (groups) and who are your potential customers?
"After our start in the DACH region and France, the strategic cooperation with the Labor Limbach Group in particular has enabled us to internationalize. Our range of services is currently available in 14 European countries. We mainly work with the following stakeholder groups: General practitioners, medical centers and networks, hospitals, pharmacies (over-the-counter and online), health insurance companies, providers of occupational health and case management, medical laboratories, telemedicine providers, online health platforms and universities and providers of specialist training and continuing education."
Where do you see yourselves in 3 years' time and how can 5-HT support you?
"We want to continue to be a formative force in the field of pharmacogenetic services. The digital integration of our services into clinical decision management software solutions and D2C distribution concepts is currently at the heart of this. Thanks to 5-HT, we have already made inspiring contacts with interested parties and stakeholders and hope that this mutually beneficial cooperation will continue as before :-)"
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