Bringing Genome Sequencing to Rural Populations

For people in rural communities, access to genomic testing can require getting on a waitlist, delays in clinical assessment, and multiple visits to urban medical centers. A pilot study from Children’s Mercy Research Institute in Kansas City, Missouri, found that by partnering with a rural clinic in a direct-to-provider model it was able to more than double the historic rate for rare disease diagnosis among the rural population and also cut the time-to-diagnosis by about five months. We spoke to Ana Cohen, assistant director of molecular genetics at CMRI, about its direct-to-provider model, how providing local support to patients at their regular clinics allowed them to bypass bottlenecks, and how the approach can shorten the time to a diagnosis for people with rare diseases in rural communities.