Dr. Victoria Blinder recently led a study that followed 267 breast cancer patients at MSK throughout their treatment. Dr. Blinder’s team found that between 20 and 30 percent of women diagnosed with breast cancer will eventually lose their job due to their diagnosis. But what was even more troubling is that poor women were four times more likely to be jobless by the end of treatment. The biggest factor in this difference is workplace accommodations for women with higher-paid, salaried jobs, where low-income women are half as likely to have accommodating work environments.
Blinder V, et al. Women with breast cancer who work for accommodating employers more likely to retain jobs after treatment. Health Affairs. 2017 Feb 1;36(2):274-81.

“Watson for Oncology” is coming to the US! IBM’s partnership with MSK will go live at it’s first use in a US community hospital. Florida’s Jupiter Medical Center will be deploying this new artificial intelligence clinical decision support tool. Currently Watson can assist clinicians with six different cancer types, and IBM and MSK are working to add an additional seven types in 2017. Watson for Oncology has already been in use in hospitals in Thailand, South Korea, and India.

The future of precision medicine was outlined in a report in Cell by MSK doctors David Hyman, Barry Taylor and José Baselga. According to the authors, this report is a roadmap for future efforts in cancer care. One of the hurdles the team addressed is that of a “engineering problem” which limits information sharing between the two vital role players, the researchers, and the clinicians.
Hyman, David M. et al. Implementing Genome-Driven Oncology. Cell 2017 Feb 9; 168(4):584-99