Monday Lunch Live
30 June 2025 (Video recording below)
How leading centres are using electronic health record tools to support lifelong risk management for genetically predisposed families
Only a small percentage of certain cancers (up to 5%) are due to a faulty inherited gene. This is what we call a familial or hereditary cancer. This can also be referred to as an inherited predisposition to cancer. The faulty gene increases the risk of cancer, but it does not mean every family member will develop the cancer.
Familial cancer clinics focus on one-time genetic testing encounters, and families with identified genetic predispositions often only get tested at or after strategic ages.
Informed by a recent sabbatical in the USA, Professor Finlay Macrae explores the need for life-long risk management for families with identified genetic predispositions. He will discuss the role of the EPIC electronic health record (EHR) platform in managing risk over the life journey of these families.
By the end of this session, participants will be able to:
- Articulate the limitations of one-time genetic testing encounters and the need for a life-long risk management strategy.
- Identify key EPIC modules and tools that support hereditary cancer surveillance (eg. registries, best practice advisories, health maintenance reminders).
- Apply lessons learned from U.S. Familial Cancer Clinics on optimising EHR workflows to the Australian healthcare context.
- Plan a roadmap for integrating EPIC-based genetics protocols into existing clinic processes, including staff training and data governance considerations.
Chair
Professor Grant MacArthur AO
Chief Executive, VCCC Alliance; Research Group Leader and Consultant Medical Oncologist, Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre; Lorenzo Galli Chair of Melanoma and Skin Cancer, University of Melbourne
Prof Grant McArthur AO is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and holds a PhD in Medical Biology. He is the inaugural Lorenzo Galli Chair of Melanoma and Skin Cancers at the University of Melbourne. His awards include the inaugural winner of the Translational Research Award of the Foundation Nelia et Amadeo Barletta, the Sir Edward Dunlop Clinical Cancer Research Fellowship of the Cancer Council of Victoria, the inaugural Martin Lackmann medal for translational research and recently received the prestigious Tom Reeve award from the Medical Oncology Group of Australia (MOGA).
Prof McArthur is the national and international study co-chair of a number of clinical trials of targeted therapies. His research interests include discovery of novel drug targets in cancer, targeting oncogenes, clinical trials of targeted therapeutics, personalised medicine, melanoma, cell cycle control, metabolism and protein synthesis in cancer, and functional imaging.
Speaker
Professor Finlay Macrae
Head of Colorectal Medicine and Genetics, Royal Melbourne Hospital
As a NHMRC Postgraduate Scholar at the RMH, Prof Macrae studied bleeding patterns from colorectal cancer and adenomas, quantitatively comparing these to FOB testing. This provided fundamental data for the RCTs of FOB screening by others demonstrating mortality reduction, leading to, inter alia, the Australian National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.
In London, as a NHMRC Applied Health Science Fellow working with Dr Christopher Williams, he implemented a large RCT of colonoscopic screening intervals in adenoma patients. Continuing at the RMH, he was co-PI of the Australian Polyp Prevention Project, the first RCT to identify a low-fat diet and unprocessed wheat bran as protective against advanced adenomas.
Prof Macrae founded clinical inflammatory bowel disease services at the RMH, a role he shares now with A/Prof Britt Christensen. He is the key organ specialist (gastroenterology) in the multidisciplinary Familial Cancer Clinic at the RMH, focusing on families with inheritable forms of bowel cancer. Prof Macrae regularly supervise MD, and MGH and PhD students in their research projects and careers in genetics and inflammatory bowel disease.
He was awarded the Order of Australia (AO) for his work in genetics and genomics in 2016 and the World Gastroenterology Organization’s highest award of Master (2016) and the Gastroenterological Society of Australia's Distinguished Research Prize in 2021.
Resource details
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