Integrating pharmacogenomic results in the electronic health record to facilitate precision medicine at a large multisite health system

Abstract

Pharmacogenomics (PGx) results can potentially guide the prescribing of dozens of medications; however, use of such results is often limited by the prescriber's awareness of results and knowledge of drug–gene interactions. Integration of PGx results with corresponding clinical decision support (CDS) in the electronic health record (EHR) is critical to facilitate genotype-guided medication prescribing among all clinicians in an integrated health system. We describe our experience with developing an infrastructure to house PGx results and ensure actionable findings can be used at the point of care in real time using CDS. Upon transitioning to a new EHR, PGx-related CDS alerts for more than 50 medications were developed using a systematic and multidisciplinary process where clinical pharmacist input was key. Multiple strategies were required to enable the storage of PGx results as discrete data from any laboratory source to drive CDS. EHR features were leveraged to link results from external laboratories to CDS and a homegrown translational software platform was developed to integrate results from the in-house genomics laboratory directly into the EHR. These processes enabled PGx result integration for 2342 patients. As an example, among 356 patients who were genotyped for CYP2C19 to guide voriconazole dosing as part of a standard protocol in bone marrow transplant, 114 (32%) had CDS alerts for medications other than voriconazole presented to a clinician. For 50 of these patients, alerts were presented to a clinician of a different specialty who likely was not aware the patient had PGx results. Clinical pharmacists at institutions performing PGx testing are encouraged to champion the integration of PGx results and CDS in the EHR to maximize clinician awareness and evidence-based use of PGx results.