Why future of cancer care is personal, predictive and preventive

In November, Peoria, Ill.-based OSF HealthCare named James McGee, MD, president of the system’s cancer institute.

Dr. McGee grew up on a small farm in central Illinois, where limited access to care shaped his early understanding of rural healthcare gaps. As president of the OSF Healthcare Cancer Institute, he is driving the institute’s efforts to improve access to research and advanced therapies, while strengthening cancer prevention and risk reduction through the system’s primary care network.

He recently joined the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” to share more about his priorities in the role as well as what makes him hopeful for the future of cancer care.

Here is an excerpt from the conversation:

Editor’s note: This response was lightly edited for clarity and length.

Question: What would you tell our listeners to be hopeful about when it comes to the future of cancer care?

Dr. James McGee: I’m very hopeful that we’ll figure out how to use genomic information to help predict cancer risks and how to mitigate those risks. We have a lot of screening that gets to be tedious and people kinda drop out of it or they miss a year here or there. I’d like to think that we will [establish] very personalized cancer risk determination, taking into account family history but also personal factors even from the genome and develop a patient profile of what screening and when would be most appropriate for them as an individual. 

In a similar fashion, some of the people that are at greatest risk of developing cancers are people who’ve been treated for cancer. They need to have a very exquisite program of follow-up that addresses the cancers for which they are now prone to get because of their exposure to various chemotherapy agents, radiation methods, et cetera. 

We’re gradually getting to the point where we can detect cancers early and then rapidly move from first suspicion of cancer to confirmation of treatment then on to actual effective treatment, all the time keeping in mind the need to do those treatments that have the least long-term side effects for the patient while improving the cure rate. If we can then say, “This cancer is cured, here’s what you have to do to make sure that you are minimizing the risk of getting into serious trouble with a follow-up problem.” When we can do that, we’ve done a lot.

Listen to the full conversation here.