Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute Forms Analytics Subsidiary

Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute recently announced the formation of a health care analytics subsidiary, developed to serve as a precision oncology and real-world evidence platform.

Called Vita Nova Insights, the entity is wholly owned by Community Oncology Revitalization Enterprise, LLC, or Core Ventures, which is FCS' management services organization. According to a statement released by FCS, Vita Nova Insights will partner with the 100-site community oncology practice to advance research by developing proprietary datasets and offer “real-world evidence, platform solutions, and analytics support to improve cancer care outcomes.”

Now celebrating its 40th year, FCS has long been a leader in clinical research. The practice offers its patients access to more clinical trials than any private practice in the state, and its physician scientists are involved in studies of most new cancer drugs approved by FDA. Now, through Core Ventures, this research tradition is expanding into the development of real-world evidence (RWE); over the past year the Vita Nova Insights team has conducted more than a dozen studies in collaboration with leading pharmaceutical companies, according to the FCS statement.

In developing RWE, being directly connected to physicians offers a distinct advantage when identifying challenges with therapies.

Nathan H. Walcker, MBA | Image credit: FCS

"Healthcare analytics companies aren't new," FCS CEO Nathan H. Walcker said in the statement. "But Vita Nova Insights is unique in its ability to symbiotically partner with FCS and its more than 250 providers across the state of Florida to study the efficacy of oncology treatment protocols and deliver perspectives from the clinic that directly inform clinical decisions and impact patient care downstream.”

This relationship allows the development of RWE that fully optimizes the use of data to create new treatments. Walcker said. “This platform is unmatched—harmonizing analytics talent, deep and clinically rich longitudinal datasets, and a market-leading independent community oncology group. There's nothing out there like it.”

The new entity supports physicians and researchers’ access to data within FCS, such as electronic medical records, as well as practice management, genomics, laboratory, radiology, and oral oncolytic pharmacy records.

“Information gleaned from our experience caring for over 1 million patients is standardized against industry reference data and further enriched using external data sources to create a more comprehensive picture of the health of every patient,” FCS officials said in the statement.

Lucio N. Gordan, MD | Image credit: FCS

Said FCS President and Managing Physician Lucio N. Gordan, MD, “The advances we have been able to achieve in data aggregation, curation, and analysis over the past three years have put meaningful data literally at physicians' fingertips, enabled precision-oncology decision support and provided clinical insights that enable us to be more nimble, more efficient in delivering superior patient care and cutting-edge therapies across the entire practice.”

Vita Nova Insights offers in-house, next-generation sequencing tests to aid the practices’ physicians, through its MolecularHelp service. The precision oncology platform is also proprietary, known as FCS PRECISE.

Trevor W. Heritage, PhD | Image credit: FCS

"Given the pace of innovation in precision-oncology, with new therapies coming to market at a rate never seen before, it is challenging for physicians to keep up," said Senior Vice President and Data Officer Trevor W. Heritage, PhD. "Vita Nova Insights analyses every genomics test result, in the context of the full patient clinical record, and alerts physicians to corresponding treatment options and associated evidence in real-time," he concluded.