Sunquest acquires Partners' GeneInsight

Sunquest Information Systems has acquired GeneInsight, an IT company that streamlines the analysis, interpretation and reporting of complex genetic tests.

The GeneInsight platform was developed by Partners HealthCare and has been in continuous clinical use since 2005 at the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine. Sunquest made a strategic investment in GeneInsight in 2014 and established an alliance with Partners to accelerate genomic-based medicine. Since that time, Sunquest and Partners have collaborated to provide genetic testing workflow capabilities to geneticists and pathologists alike.

“We are at the beginning of the most exciting decade in healthcare, and precision medicine is one of our highest priorities for innovation,” said Matthew Hawkins, president of Sunquest, said in a release. “GeneInsight is the most clinically-proven platform on the market and advances our ability to deliver a complete and integrated workflow for both inherited and somatic testing efforts. We will continue to invest in GeneInsight and introduce additional solutions that advance molecular and genomic-based diagnostics.”

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. Sunquest, with more than 30 years of laboratory IT experience, will provide integration capabilities with other healthcare IT vendors including EHRs, LIMS and genetic content providers. The company 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.

Under the terms of the agreement, GeneInsight will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sunquest and maintain its existing Boston-based office.

“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.”

Beth Walsh,

Editor

Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.

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