InsightRX: How Precision Dosing Is Making Personalized Treatment A Reality For Patients

By Amit Chowdhry • Apr 8, 2024

InsightRX enables life science and provider healthcare organizations to individualize treatment from clinical development to the point of care. Pulse 2.0 interviewed InsightRX co-founder and CEO Sirj Goswami to learn more about the company. 

Sirj Goswami’s Background / Formation Of InsightRX

After asking Goswami about his background and the formation of InsightRX, he said:

“My journey to founding InsightRX was defined not by a single, pivotal moment, but by a succession of insights accumulated throughout my career in both industry and academia. Working initially as a data scientist in the biotech sector, I was struck by a critical flaw in the drug development process: the focus on the “average patient.” This standard approach often falls short, as most patients possess distinct metabolic and clinical profiles that diverge from this average concept.”

“Consequently, as drugs transition from approval to broader clinical use, their one-size-fits-all dosing regimens frequently face scrutiny due to the suboptimal outcomes they produce for a diverse patient population.” 

“Recognizing this, I pursued a Ph.D. focusing on mathematical modeling in pharmacology, aiming to understand and address this heterogeneity in drug response. During my time at UCSF, a collaboration with the Bone Marrow Transplant Group in 2014 proved pivotal. Tasked with creating an application for individualized chemotherapy dosing, we developed a precision dosing solution that was very well-received by clinicians.” 

“The positive response to this project underscored the significant need for tailored dosing in various medical treatments. It led us to establish InsightRX during my graduate studies, with the aim of creating a platform that utilizes quantitative methods to improve drug dosing practices. Our goal is to transition from the traditional, less effective “fixed dosing regimen” to a more individualized, outcome-focused approach in healthcare.”

Favorite Memory

What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Goswami shared: 

“My most cherished memory at InsightRX so far is when we integrated our first precision dosing solution with Stanford’s electronic health record (EHR) system. This milestone allowed clinical pharmacists to individualize vancomycin dosing for pediatric patients. Witnessing our hard work materialize into a tool that directly benefits patients was profoundly rewarding. It was a tangible demonstration of our vision coming to life – where advanced technology meets healthcare to make a real difference in people’s lives. Seeing our solution being used in such a meaningful way, especially for children, reinforced the importance of our mission and gave the entire team a sense of accomplishment and purpose.”

Core Products

What are the company’s core products and features? Goswami explained: 

“Our core offerings encompass two cutting-edge platforms and a distinctive process we call “continuous learning,” which is central to our personalized medicine approach. We combine patient-level and population-level learning to maximize therapeutic benefits for patients.” 

“Firstly, our Nova platform serves as a clinical decision support tool. It delivers real-time, patient-specific guidance to healthcare professionals. Nova stands out for its ability to predict the likelihood of toxicity events, forecast clinical responses, and offer customized dose recommendations, thus optimizing both safety and efficacy. This platform’s effectiveness stems from its advanced predictive models, which include both statistical and pharmacological principles.”

“Secondly, Apollo, our real-time analytics platform, complements Nova. It utilizes aggregated and de-identified data from Nova, turning this information into a powerful resource for understanding response and toxicity rates, particularly in subpopulations where conventional data may be lacking.”

“What sets us apart is our model and algorithm optimization process. This patented methodology allows us to refine our predictive models with aggregated and de-identified data continuously. These enhanced models are then reintegrated into Nova, perpetually improving its capacity for informed clinical decision-making.”

Significant Milestones

What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Goswami cited:

“InsightRX has achieved several significant milestones that underscore our impact on the U.S. healthcare system. A testament to our platform’s effectiveness is our partnership with more than 750 hospitals across more than 150 health systems. This extensive collaboration speaks to the trust and reliance placed in our technology by healthcare professionals nationwide.” 

“A particularly noteworthy achievement is the role of InsightRX Nova in personalizing more than 4 million dose advices for nearly 730,000 patients. This milestone not only demonstrates the platform’s widespread usage but also its pivotal role in enhancing patient care through precision dosing.”

“In 2023, InsightRX achieved significant scientific breakthroughs. A key development was the integration of the Modified Thomson model into our Nova platform, specifically recommended for adult patients receiving vancomycin with a BMI under 40. A comprehensive analysis of over 168,000 patient treatment courses revealed that this model outperformed three other high-performing models in prediction accuracy.” 

“We also introduced FitAssist, an innovative enhancement to our platform. FitAssist enhances user experience by considering the variance between predicted and actual drug levels, as well as the bias degree in predictions. It assists users in evaluating the potential advantages of using flattened priors — an algorithm that diminishes the impact of population parameters while giving greater weight to observational data.”

“Additionally, our technology is reshaping the landscape of drug development. We’ve successfully integrated our solutions into several clinical trials for new investigational therapies, marking a significant shift in how new drugs are brought to market.”

“With more than 100 drug modules and 150+ validated PKPD (pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic) models, our platform stands at the forefront of precision medicine, offering an unparalleled breadth and depth of drug data and modeling capabilities.”

Differentiation From The Competition

What differentiates the company from its competition? Goswami affirmed:

“InsightRX distinguishes itself from the competition through a combination of deep scientific expertise and advanced technological capabilities. Key differentiators include: 

1.) Expert Team with Clinical and Scientific Depth: Our team comprises clinical pharmacists and scientists with deep domain knowledge in model-informed precision dosing. This expertise ensures our solutions are grounded in the latest scientific understanding and clinical best practices. 

2.) Real-time Analytics and Continuous Learning: At the heart of our approach is the principle that predictive models should never be static. Our platform embodies this philosophy. This approach ensures that our models continually evolve, improving in accuracy as we integrate more data.”

Future Company Goals

What are some of the company’s future goals? Goswami concluded:

“At InsightRX, we have established a strong foundation in personalizing dosages for approved drugs, particularly in inpatient settings with a need for therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM). Our journey so far, focusing on medications with complex dosing regimens like vancomycin, aminoglycosides, and conditioning agents such as busulfan, ATG, and fludarabine, has been impactful as the results above indicate.”

“As we look to the future, our vision is expansive and multifaceted. We recognize the scope of precision dosing extends far beyond our current focus. We are gearing up to broaden our horizons, extending our precision dosing solutions to other therapeutic categories administered in hospital settings as well as moving into outpatient settings, making personalized medication management accessible in more diverse healthcare environments. Further, we are applying our transformative AI-enabled precision dosing approach to new therapeutic areas, including oncology, organ transplantation, hematology, and more.” 

“Innovation remains at the core of our strategy. We plan to integrate advanced technologies, such as large language models (LLMs), into our solutions. This integration is expected to enhance decision-making in precision dosing, adding another layer of sophistication to our platform.”

“Our long-term ambition is to redefine the landscape of drug development. We aim to pioneer a new paradigm where dose optimization strategies are integral to the clinical development of new drugs right from the beginning. This visionary approach is not just about enhancing drug administration; it’s about transforming how drugs are developed, aligning with our mission to make personalized treatment a reality for every patient.”