ASCO Announces Partner for CancerLinQ Platform

Oncology (ASCO) announced

January 21, 2015,1 that it would

use the SAP HANA platform to develop

CancerLinQ, the revolutionary health

information technology (HIT) project in

which physicians are banding together

to improve cancer care delivery.

The American Society of Clinical

“In teaming with SAP, we found an ideal

company with state-of-

the-art technology, a

commitment to invest

major new resources,

and a clear dedication

to our patient care mission,”

ASCO president

Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP,

FASCO, said in a statement.

“With our cancer

expertise complemented

by SAP’s software and

technical insights, CancerLinQ

is in a position to

make a huge leap toward

becoming the platform of

choice for oncologists.”¹

CancerLinQ is an effort to transform

the cancer care decision-making process

by securely gathering real-world data on

cancer patients in 1 place, giving clinicians

immediate high-quality feedback

and support for decision making. When

CancerLinQ is up and running, clinicians

in the field will be able to get personalized

feedback on patients based on the

most up-to-date findings, the type of information

that was previously unavailable

in many settings.

Journal of Managed Care, Yu described

how CancerLinQ would eventually collect

data across hundreds of providers

and thousands of patients and thus help

avoid the bias that can be present in

small sample sizes.²

In a previous interview with The American

“CancerLinQ will allow us to amass

this data, aggregate it and

analyze it, and then learn

from that,” he explained.

“If that is then married

to clinical decision support,

so that information

is returned to the doctor

at the point of care, it

will allow the physician

to more rapidly consider

choices and make better

treatment decisions.”

²

doctor and patient a data-

driven “second opinion,”

derived not from a

few dozen similar cases

presented to a single physician or practice,

but from thousands of similar cases

involving hundreds of physicians.

The idea is to give both

the world for helping clinicians use technology

to improve cancer diagnosis and

treatment through flexible, multi-purpose

in-memory data management and

applications. Its advanced capabilities

include predictive text analytics, spatial

processing, and data virtualization on

the same architecture. Among the users

of SAP HANA is the National Center for

SAP HANA has a track record around

which uses real-time data analytics to

help accelerate cancer research and improve

clinical trial matching. In Japan,

SAP has teamed with Mitsui Knowledge

Industry, trimming the time for an individual

patient’s genomic analysis for

cancer diagnosis from 30 days to 20 minutes.

Tumor Diseases in Heidelberg, Germany, ¹

for some time, across the tenure of several

ASCO presidents. During a March

2013 demonstration in Washington, DC,

then—ASCO president elect Cliff Hudis,

CancerLinQ has been in development

someday be able to analyze the electronic

medical records of millions of cancer

patients, find those with characteristics

similar to his own patient, and determine

how others fared with therapy options,

using nothing more than a simple

desktop computer. That scenario seemed

far off at the time, but now versions of

CancerLinQ will be ready in late 2015.^1,3

MD, showed how an oncologist would

States have signed agreements to provide

patient records for the first version

of CancerLinQ, and 7 more will soon join,

which means 500,000 patient records

will populate the first version of the program.

¹ Practices providing data represent

both major cancer centers and community

practices, ensuring an array of data.

Eight oncology practices in the United

technologies, CancerLinQ will

drive development of the platform with

input from physicians, patients, and experts

in related disciplines such as quality

improvement, epidemiology, and HIT.

While SAP will provide access to customized EBO

References

to develop CancerLinQ [press release].

Alexandria, VA: American Society of Clinical Oncology;

January 21, 2015. http://www.asco.org/

advocacy/asco-teams-multinational-softwarecorporation-

sap-develop-cancerlinq%E2%84%A2.

1. ASCO teams with multinational software corporation

aggregating patient, doctor data. AJMC

website. http://www.ajmc.com/ajmc-tv/interviews/

ASCO-President-Dr-Yu-Discusses-Aggregating-

Patient-Doctor-Data. Published September

25, 2014. Accessed January 21, 2015.

2. Beagin N. ASCO President Dr Peter Yu discusses

on CancerLinQ [press release]. Alexandria, VA:

American Society of Clinical Oncology; March

27, 2013. Galieo Analytics website. http://www.

galileoanalytics.com/galileo-cosmos-featured-inasco-

briefing-on-cancerlinq/.

3. Galileo Cosmos featured in ASCO briefing

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