Companion Diagnostics
Technological advancements have significantly contributed to improving the quality of health care services offered to patients. One of the markedly useful technological tools used in clinical practices is companion diagnostics. Companion diagnostics is a medical device used during a drug prescription to determine a corresponding drug’s safety and effectiveness. Companion diagnostics rely on the patients’ medical history and genetic constitutions to establish if the prescribed therapeutic drug will yield maximum benefits and identify those who are likely to be intensely affected by the prescribed therapeutic drug’s side effects. Importantly, companion diagnostics monitor the treatment progress to help improve patients’ outcomes. However, the diagnostic test has to be accurate for the companion diagnostic to be optimal. Companion diagnostics is related to DNA extraction, NGS, and Laboratory preparation because it relies on the genetic information analyzed through DNA extraction and NGS.
Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) extraction is useful in understanding the patient’s genetic constitution to study and develop diagnostics tools for genetic diseases, including cancer and sickle cell anemia. Companion diagnostics is related to DNA extraction in that it relies on the patients’ genetic information to establish the possibility of the prescribed drug to yield significant patient outcomes.
Similarly, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS), which offers useful insights into disease research, is related to Companion diagnostics. Library preparation is the initial step toward successful NGS, whose primary objective is to identify the sample and allow either Ribonucleic Acid (RNA) or DNA to adhere to the flow cell, a compartment in which sequencing occurs. Like NGS, companion diagnostics rely on the DNA sequences to provide information about the safety and compatibility of therapeutic drugs and biological products. It is worth noting that all biological processes, including immunology reactions, are primarily dependent on gene sequencing. Since the NGS purposes of providing important information about the wellbeing of the patients, companion diagnostics complements the efforts of NGS by predicting the usefulness of either a biological product or therapeutic drug.
Biotech Applications based on Companion Diagnostics
Several applications are designed to be used explicitly by doctors concerning companion diagnostics. Some of the applications are used by doctors to ensure the right prescription. It is worth noting that doctors serve a diverse group of patients in a day. Despite the diverse number of patients served in a day, doctors have to make the right decisions regarding drug prescriptions. Different patients are allergic to different drugs, which doctors must be aware of during prescription. Besides allergy, new drugs are being developed regularly, necessitating intensive use of companion diagnostics to identify the patients’ right dosage. With use applications, doctors’ diagnosis and prescription process are made effective, and consequently, patient outcome improves.
Equally important, companion diagnostics avoid nurse burn out by reducing the workload of nurses. Electronic health Recording applications to collect and store information about the patients avail adequate data that improves patients’ outcomes when combined with companion diagnostics. Electronic Health Records data includes the patients’ medical history, treatment progress, allergic reactions, and family history. By availing the comprehensive information, the work of doctors is made easier and consequently avoids nurse burnout.