Sharing collective wisdom is the theme of the 2016 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, and that concept is at the heart of Syapse’s new Oncology Precision Network. Palo Alto, California-based Syapse unveiled its new tool for generating collective wisdom in cancer genomics in conjunction with the ASCO meeting, which runs through Tuesday in Chicago.
To form this network, Sypase partnered with Intermountain Health Care, Salt Lake City; Providence Health & Services, Renton, Washington; and Stanford Cancer Institute, Palo Alto. The network enables the two health systems and Stanford—comprising 79 hospitals in 11 states—to share anonymous cancer patient genomic data. Through this network, oncologists can tap into a vast database to help them determine which targeted therapies or clinical trials may be beneficial to a patient with a specific genetic profile.
“We help hospital systems implement and scale precision medicine programs,” explained Dr. Jordan Stockton, Syapse’s vice president of marketing, “for any type of diagnostic or treatment regimen that requires a lot of complex data in order to make reasonable decisions and the discipline most in need of that is genomics in cancer care.”
Syapse already has a software platform, its Precision Medicine Platform, that pulls together disparate patient data within a health system, such as EHR information, images, and pathology data and formats it as structured data to help clinicians develop optimal treatment plans for patients, explained Stockton. The new Oncology Precision Network goes outside the boundaries of one health system and provides physicians with a new tool for clinical decision-making by giving them access to genomic data sets from other health systems.
“That increases the ‘n’ available patient records to improve patient care,” said Stockton. “You want to find a patient who is like your patients in some clinically significant way and mine that data.”
Initially, the network will consist of approximately 100,000 data sets. Data from about 50,000 new cancer patients will be added each year, according to Syapse, and eventually the network will include genomic data on 1.5 million historical cancer cases.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Syapse plans to add other genomic precision networks, said Stockton, both additional oncology networks and precision networks for other diseases.
Photo: Flickr user toban black
