GENOMICS
Taking control of in-house genomic testing: faster NGS results
As a small community hospital, Pennsylvania’s Doylestown Health had to rely on external services for next-generation sequencing. Here, Allison Eck explains how she was able to bring NGS testing in-house and the benefits it has brought to patients and researchers.
Doylestown Health has been on a mission since its inception over a century ago to serve the community and provide great care for every patient, every time. And we’ve accomplished that, having grown into a 245-bed hospital and a clinical laboratory processing more than one million tests annually. But despite our growth in breadth of capabilities, we faced a crucial limitation:
our pathology laboratory lacked the capacity to perform next-generation sequencing (NGS) in-house, which forced us to rely on outside reference laboratories for molecular testing. This often meant waiting up to three weeks for test results that could advance vital research. Plus, the cost of outsourcing these tests was putting a strain on our already stretched resources. As a small
community hospital, we had to find a way to bring NGS in-house, but with our limited space and small team, it needed to be efficient and adaptable to our current laboratory setup.
The right NGS solution After many discussions and much research, in 2023, we decided Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Ion Torrent Genexus System was the right solution for our team to bring NGS testing in-house. The Genexus System’s automation, particularly its purification system, was a decisive factor in our selection process. Because we don’t have a specialty group, we needed something that was easy to use with minimal hands-on touch points. Additionally, the platform had ready-to-use libraries, a much faster turnaround time (TAT), and simplified bioinformatics interpretation – all of which helped address issues around limited bandwidth.
Once the system was up and running, our laboratory team was also quick to adapt. One of our histo-techs was trained on the system and one of our pathologists – who had some previous experience with NGS – did some additional training and a refresher course to get up to speed.
Immediate benefits The increase in the clinical stages of breast and colorectal cancer following the pandemic emphasises the heightened urgency for the development and implementation of precision therapies.1 Conducting these tests in-house – we completed 150 colorectal and lung cancer tests in our first year – helps us stay ahead of the curve and provide patients with the fast, tailored treatments they need (and deserve).
Now over a hundred years old, Doylestown Health in Pennsylvania has grown into a 245-bed hospital and a clinical laboratory processing more than one million tests annually.
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The benefits of implementing the Genexus System in-house were almost
JUNE 2025
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