Cancer science and information technology are advancing rapidly, but the way we care for patients today cannot fully capitalize on those advances.The proliferation of scientific results and novel treatments is a growing challenge for all oncology professionals as we enter the era of highly personalized cancer care. Patients are increasingly presenting with “rare cancers,” more narrowly defined by their molecular characteristics, sometimes making the best course of treatment unclear. Today more than ever, oncologists need real-time decision support to help them provide the most effective treatments tailored to their patients’ unique biology and tumors.
The CancerLinQ™ prototype was completed in just eight months and included more than 170,000 de-identified medical records of breast cancer patients provided by oncology practices around the United States. It demonstrated the feasibility of all major components of a learning health system and provided lessons that will guide ASCO’s development of the full system. The following are highlights of the development and unveiling of the prototype. A rapid learning system, described by the Institute of Medicine in a 2010 report, is designed to draw insight from the vast, untapped pool of data on “real world” patients.
Today, we know very little about most patients with cancer – from the molecular characteristics of their tumors to the outcomes of their treatments – because these details are locked away in unconnected electronic and paper records. In practice, once the full technology platform is completed, CancerLinQ will place a new universe of practical insights at the fingertips of:
– Doctors: Access up-to-the-minute, individualized decision support based on published reports and real world experience
– Patients: Access to personalized treatment information from their medical team
– Researchers: Access to information from a massive body of de-identified data on patient care and results to conduct secondary analytics. For more information, we invite you to follow the link below.
www.asco.org/quality-guidelines/cancerlinq