Royal Philips, a global enterprise in health technology, recently announced it has teamed up with Biodesix, Inc. (Colorado, US) (Nasdaq: BDSX), a data-driven diagnostic solutions company, to incorporate the results of Biodesix’s Nodify Lung blood-based lung nodule risk assessment testing into Philips Lung Cancer Orchestrator lung cancer patient management system. The incorporation of proteomics data – along with the radiologic and patient history data currently used to determine treatment decisions – can help create diagnostic efficiency for cancer care centers in the management of a growing number of lung nodule cases, via the contextual launch of Biodesix Nodify Lung application within Lung Cancer Orchestrator. Philips Lung Cancer Orchestrator solution is designed to enable health systems to operationalize lung cancer screening and lung nodule management programs at scale.
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide [1], with current 5-year survival rates after diagnosis typically less than 20% [2]. If detected and treated early, however, research shows 10-year survival rates could increase to more than 90% [3]. Thanks to the adoption of low-dose CT (computer tomography) screening and better management of incidental lung nodule findings, early-stage diagnosis and treatment is now possible, but has resulted in rapidly increasing caseloads. For example, recent changes in US guidelines have nearly doubled the number of people now eligible for lung cancer screening [4].
“By incorporating Biodesix’s Nodify Lung testing, we take another step in leveraging integrated diagnostics from imaging, genomics, and now proteomic results from a simple blood draw to address key moments in the lung cancer patient journey, support care team decision-making, and help health systems learn from their practice patterns in a dashboard view,” said Louis Culot, general manager Oncology Informatics and Genomics at Philips. “We expect the inclusion of Biodesix’s ground-breaking technology in Philips Lung Cancer Orchestrator to help drive more confident decisions for the care team, and ultimately benefit patients.”
As a next-step after radiologic lung nodule assessment, minimally-invasive biopsy procedures such as endobronchial biopsy (accessing a nodule via the patient’s airways), are already helping early-stage diagnosis. With 62% of biopsies conducted on benign nodules [5], by detecting the presence of blood-based biomarkers combined with clinical and radiomic factors, Biodesix’s Nodify Lung blood-based proteomic tests help clinicians to reclassify the risk of malignancy to better target resources to those who need them. If a nodule is malignant, the delay in surgical care for cancer patients by four weeks increases the mortality by 6-8% [6].
“We are delighted that our tests are being incorporated into Philips’ vision for end-to-end cancer care management using a multi-diagnostic approach,” shares Scott Hutton, chief executive officer at Biodesix.
“By integrating our Nodify tests in Philips Lung Cancer Orchestrator we hope to make these tests more accessible to physicians and patients and more easily utilized by care teams with the ultimate goal of improving patient care and outcomes.”
Philips Lung Cancer Orchestrator is an integrated patient management system for CT lung cancer screening programs and incidental lung nodule findings that keeps track of patients, appointments, diagnostic images, test results, and clinical decisions for every step of a lung cancer patient’s screening and treatment journey. Fitting seamlessly into conventional screening and diagnostic workflows, it coordinates the end-to-end patient journey to create a fully traceable, fully documented timeline of scheduled actions, and aggregates data on tumor staging, radiology, pathology, and biomarker analyses for informed decision-making. The ability to order and receive the results expedites Biodesix’s proteomic testing directly to and from the Lung Cancer Orchestrator at the same time it adds new insights on nodule risk of malignancy to further support the decision-making process.
Lung Cancer Orchestrator is part of Philips’ expanding portfolio of integrated cancer care solutions that seamlessly connect data, technology, operations, and clinical workflows to enable pivotal decision-making.
[1] International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization. Press Release N° 263. Latest global cancer data: Cancer burden rises to 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million cancer deaths in 2018. 12 September 2018
[2]https://www.medicinenet.com/what_is_the_most_survivable_cancer/article.htm
[3] International Early Lung Cancer Action Program Investigators. Survival of patients with stage 1 lung cancer detected on CT screening. N Engl J Med. 2006;355:1763- 1771 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa060476.
[4] Lane E, et al. Nearly twice as many people are now eligible for lung cancer screenings—here is what you need to know. Advisory Board publication. 2021.Washington, DC. https://www.advisory.com/sponsored/lung-cancer
[5] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4665735/
[6] Mortality due to cancer treatment delay: systematic review and meta-analysis. BMJ 2020;371:m4087 http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4087
