At-home Chatbot Technology Evaluates Your Unique Cancer Risk

Early detection, with any disease and particularly cancer, is the key to effective treatment.

- Dr. Burns C. Blaxall, PhD, Founding Executive Director of Precision Medicine at The Christ Hospital Health Network

Dr. Burns C. Blaxall and the Precision Medicine team at The Christ Hospital Health Network are catching cancer before it starts and helping people to understand how they can manage their unique risk-levels for cancer as they age. 

Having a proactive approach to our own health and wellness is a lifestyle choice the team at WISe believes in and hopes to instill in our community. In this week's Well Within 10 podcast, hear how the Precision Medicine team at The Christ Hospital is supporting this mentality by getting ahead of cancer before it even starts, and is leveraging technology to make cutting-edge genetic testing accessible to everyone.

In October 2020, The Christ Hospital launched an at-home, interactive chatbot tool called Gia (Genetic Information Assistant) to evaluate hereditary cancer risk.

The evaluation is a FREE service provided to any woman scheduled for a mammogram, or with a genetic counselor or high-risk cancer screening clinic within The Christ Hospital Health Network. The chatbot tool calculates whether a patient meets NCCN Guidelines for genetic testing as well as whether they qualify for enhanced frequency of breast imaging.

In the past year, over 18,000 patients in the Cincinnati area have filled out the chatbot evaluation. Of those, over 4,600 have met NCCN guidelines for genetic testing, and over 2,200 qualify for enhanced imaging.

Soon, The Christ Hospital hopes to provide the genetic evaluation to any Women’s Health patient, then ultimately to all Primary Care patients. (Stay tuned!)

If a patient meets certain criteria, they generally qualify through insurance for genetic testing and more frequent and higher resolution screening for breast cancer.

These patients then visit The Christ Hospital Genetic Counseling and High-Risk Cancer Screening Clinic where they see a genetic counselor and/or cancer specialist. Together they come up with a plan to aid with prevention, early detection, and treatment plans.

After testing, if a patient is found to have an actionable mutation, a proactive treatment plan is rolled-out for both you and your family. Any blood relative can be tested for FREE for the same variant. “We help both patients and their families be proactive with their health,” says Dr. Blaxall. And this is truly impactful.

Take steps NOW to be proactive in cancer prevention here.

Learn more about genetic testing at The Christ Hospital and the benefits of Precision Medicine here. 

To speak with a Precision Medicine expert at The Christ Hospital Genetic Counseling and High-Risk Cancer Screening Clinic, call (513) 585-2760.

Burns C. Blaxall, PhD, is the founding Executive Director of Precision Medicine at The Christ Hospital Health Network (TCHHN). He leads efforts to transition from reactive to proactive healthcare delivery by harnessing the power of personal diagnostic and genomic data. Using approaches ranging from cutting edge hereditary disease risk assessment, genetic counseling and testing to pharmacogenomics and genome-guided clinical care pathways, Precision Medicine at TCHHN aims to provide proactive, individualized care for every patient. 

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