VA, Sanford Health announce precision medicine partnership

The Department of Veterans Affairs and Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Sanford Health will provide free pharmacogenetic testing to veterans through a partnership to improve care and lower costs related to adverse reactions to medications. Sanford Health and philanthropist Denny Sanford will provide $25 million each to fund the PHASeR initiative, which will initially enroll cancer survivors and expand by 2022 to include up to 250,000 veterans at 125 sites and pharmaceutical treatments for mental health, cardiovascular disease and pain management, the partners said. Veterans will access the testing at their local VA facility, beginning at a pilot site in Durham, N.C. Sanford Health will process the tests at its South Dakota-based Imagenetics facility and share the results with the patients’ physicians through the electronic health record to help in choosing treatments. More than 90 percent of patients tested at the facility carry a genetic change that could affect medication selection or dosing, the health system said.