Right now, someone is sitting in a doctor’s office being prescribed a medication that will not work for them. Not because the doctor made a mistake or because the drug is bad, but because their DNA processes it differently, and nobody checked. Genetic variations may alter drug metabolism, leading to hyper-metabolism or hypo-metabolism, or significantly reduce bioavailability.
The science has existed for years. What has been missing is a pharmacogenetics platform that puts that science into people’s hands at the moment it actually matters. This is the problem Intelligene set out to solve. And Praelexis helped build the technology to make it work at scale.
Why do patients still get the wrong medication?
Pharmacogenomics, the study of how your genes affect your response to medication, is not new. Researchers have known for decades that genetic variations influence how people metabolise drugs. Two patients can take the same antidepressant at the same dose: one gets relief, the other gets side effects, or the medicine has no effect on them whatsoever, and that can make them abandon treatment entirely. The difference is often written into their DNA. The challenge has never been the science. It has been getting the information to the patient.
What is Intelligene and what pharmacogenetic insights does it provide?
Intelligene is a South African pharmacogenetics platform that uses DNA testing to deliver personalised lifestyle recommendations and clinical decision support for medical practitioners. Users take a DNA test, and based on their genetic profile, they receive personalised recommendations for wellness, diet, fitness, and crucially, insights on how they are likely to respond to specific medications for conditions like hypertension, diabetes, depression, and high cholesterol.
Intelligene had already built a scientifically rigorous product that delivered results in the form of detailed PDF reports. These reports were thorough and well-researched, but Intelligene recognised an opportunity to go further: to make the experience more interactive, more accessible, and more responsive to the pace at which genetic research evolves.
See the platform in action
Read our case study on how Praelexis built Intelligene’s interactive genetics platform with them.
Read the case studyHow Praelexis and Intelligene built a scalable pharmacogenetics platform
This is where the partnership with Praelexis began. Praelexis designed and built Intelligene’s pharmacogenetics platform on Azure, transforming static PDF reports into a scalable, interactive system that delivers personalised lifestyle recommendations and clinical decision support in near real-time, handling secure data flows to and from medical schemes in a way that a non-technical user could navigate with ease. Praelexis designed the full platform architecture on Azure, establishing the data engineering pipelines, and integrating AI where it could create the most leverage.
The user can grant their doctor access to their profile, and the doctor can check the medicines they want to prescribe to the user in real time during the consultation by adding them to the user’s profile, thereby gaining access to research-based clinical decision support for each medication and how it interacts with the user’s genetics. These insights include ideal dosage insights, potential alternatives, and the medication’s effects.
How does AI keep the clinical decision support up to date?
AI enables Intelligene’s pharmacogenetics platform to update personalised clinical decision support for medical practitioners within twenty-four hours of new research being published. Genetic research moves fast. New studies are published constantly that refine our understanding of how specific gene variants interact with specific drugs. In the old model, incorporating new research into patient insights was a manual process, slow, resource-intensive, and prone to the kind of lag that means a user might be acting on outdated information for months.
Praelexis developed a customised Large Language Model (LLM) designed to assist Intelligene’s researchers. This accelerates the experts. The LLM helps researchers process newly published studies faster, identify which findings are relevant to existing user profiles, and update clinical decision support at a previously impossible pace.
What technology powers the Intelligene platform?
The platform runs on a cloud-native architecture built on Microsoft Azure, combining data engineering, cloud architecture, machine learning, and a customised LLM into a system designed for continuous improvement. For anyone building or investing in AI-driven platforms, the Intelligene project illustrates a pattern worth paying attention to. The value does not come from a single model doing a single clever thing. It comes from the orchestration.
The platform is managed with an agile methodology, and the development is ongoing. This is deliberate. When it comes to precision medicine, the science evolves, the regulatory landscape shifts, and medical scheme integrations require constant attention. The architecture was designed from day one to accommodate that reality, with secure data stores, compliant data flows, and the flexibility to scale as Intelligene’s user base grows.
Do patients want access to their genetic data?
There is a persistent assumption in healthcare that patients do not want this kind of information: that genetic data is too complex for ordinary people, that it belongs in the domain of specialists, locked behind referral pathways and clinical consultations.
Intelligene’s experience suggests otherwise. When the information is presented clearly, is actionable, and connects directly to decisions people are already making about their health, they engage with it. The platform does not ask users to become geneticists. It translates the science into language they can utilise when consulting with their preferred medical specialist: this medication is likely to work well for you; this one may cause side effects; here is what your genetic profile suggests about your diet and exercise.
Who is Intelligene’s pharmacogenetics platform for?
When combined with consulting a medical professional, Intelligene opens up a whole new world of possibilities for anyone who wants to partake in precision health. Intelligene caters to both end users with an accessible view and medical professionals with a specific scientific view of your profile. Your doctor knows your medical history, monitors you, and, with Intelligene, has access to Intelligene’s scientific view, which provides the raw facts of the research so the specialist can understand exactly why certain insights are presented to the user. This enables the specialist to provide the best possible care.
In other words, patients are not so much encouraged to make dosage and care decisions for themselves, but to utilise Intelligene’s accessible insights to maximise the care they are already receiving and to implement lifestyle changes that will benefit their health.
A primary goal for Intelligene is to eliminate the traditional, inefficient “triage” process where general practitioners trial the cheapest drugs before progressing to more expensive options. With Intelligene’s insights, doctors can go straight to the prescriptions that will yield the best results, based on how the active ingredients interact with the patient’s genetics. This is better for the patient and also saves the medical aid money because you can now really pinpoint which drugs are best for the job at hand.
Can medical aids cover pharmacogenetic testing in South Africa?
Yes, several South African medical schemes already cover pharmacogenetic testing through partnerships with Intelligene. Pharmacogenetics can be expensive, which is why it is so important for Intelligene to work together with medical aids to cover expenses. Consider a patient who is taking chronic medication: it is in the interests of both the patient and the medical aid that these meds do their job. Intelligene enables patients and healthcare professionals to assess, based on research, the best way to treat chronic illness.
What does Intelligene tell us about the future of precision medicine?
There is a broader movement in healthcare, globally and in South Africa, towards precision medicine: treatments and recommendations tailored to the individual rather than the population average. What Intelligene and Praelexis have built together shows what the technology layer behind precision medicine can look like when it is done well: practical, accessible, and sustainable at scale with the help of medical aids.
Praelexis is an AI advisory and implementation partner headquartered in Stellenbosch, with offices in Germany. We help companies turn AI into real-world impact. Get in touch or take our AI Readiness Assessment.
To learn more about Intelligene and their genetic testing services, visit intelligene.health.