Yvonne Bombard, Canada Research Chair at Unity Health Toronto and a Professor at the University of Toronto, shared a post by Muin J. Khoury, Affiliate Professor at the University of Washington School of Public Health, adding:

“As genomic screening expands, one of the most pressing questions we face is not whether we can test at scale — but whether we can deliver high-quality genetics services at scale.

Congrats Chloe Mighton, Zornitza Stark, Melissa Martyn, Clara Gaff and colleagues on providing important evidence validating the Genetics Adviser digital platform in delivering effective and efficient counselling at scale. This is not about replacing clinicians — it is about optimizing how expertise is delivered in high-volume care models.

For population screening programs to be sustainable, we must address workforce constraints, ensure informed decision-making, and maintain quality of care. Evidence like this helps validate digital solutions like Genetics Adviser in empowering patients, standardizing guideline-concordant care, and enabling professionals to focus on complex, high-need cases.

Digital infrastructure, when rigorously evaluated, can be a critical enabler of equitable access to precision medicine.

It is encouraging to see robust data emerging to guide this next phase of population genomics screening.”

Quoting Muin J. Khoury‘s post:

“Digital Tools Meet Genetic Counseling in Population Genomic Screening. With growing interest in population genomic screening, alternative delivery models may be required for augmenting pre-test genetic counselling to prevent resource pressures. While digital tools are a potential solution; their impact is under-explored in population genomic screening.

Chloe Mighton and coauthors examine the impact of a decision support tool in active decision-making related to opportunistic genomic screening in the pediatric acute care context. The results published in Nature Portfolio EJHG show that use of the web-based digital platform- Genetics Advisor (GA)- “improved patient understanding of genomic screening and impacted subsequent genetic counselling, reducing the amount of consult time spent discussing genomic screening and the number of families requesting more than one pre-test genetic counselling session.”

The findings show the utility of GA in supporting education and decision support for genomic screening, and suggest that digital tools have the potential to help scale population genomic screening.”

Title: Impact of a digital platform on genetic counselling encounters in the screening context

Authors: Chloe Mighton, Alli Jan, Ling Lee, Sophie Bouffler, Lilian Downie, Marc Clausen, Clara Gaff, Yvonne Bombard, Zornitza Stark, Melissa Martyn