Sunquest Information Systems Inc. has announced the acquisition of GeneInsight Inc., an IT company that streamlines the analysis, interpretation and reporting of complex genetic tests.
Since first partnering with GeneInsight, Sunquest has advanced the precision medicine capabilities of GeneInsight, including the addition of a filtration algorithm that allows users to pare down long lists of variants gleaned from the whole-genome and whole-exome sequencing tests and more quickly identify and precisely identify variants relevant for a particular patient.
“GeneInsight’s goal is to provide clinicians and laboratories with the ability to constantly improve clinical genetic processes and enable deeper cross-organizational communication for the benefit of patients,” said Sandy Aronson, executive director of information technology, Partners HealthCare’s Personalized Medicine and a founder of GeneInsight. “Sunquest will bring the GeneInsight solution to far more institutions, furthering its integration into pathology workflows and, by doing so, enable it to help many more people.”
Here are five things to know about the acquisition:
1. Under the terms of the agreement, GeneInsight will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunquest and maintain its existing Boston-based office.
2. Sunquest’s investment in GeneInsight supports its efforts to integrate genetics into routine diagnostic workflows and make findings available to clinicians globally in real-time.
3. Sunquest is offering integration capabilities with other healthcare IT vendors including EHRs, LIMS and genetic content providers
4. Sunquest will also continue to further develop VariantWire, a networking infrastructure and crowd-sourcing platform designed to enable high-throughput transfer of structured genetic data between and among laboratories and clinicians to improve existing clinical variant interpretations.
5. The acquisition advances Sunquest’s ability to deliver a complete and integrated workflow for both inherited and somatic testing efforts.