ASCO Teams With SAP To Help Transform Cancer Patient Care

ASCO’s groundbreaking CancerLinQ big-data platform to leverage SAP HANA® to deliver high-quality care

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) recently announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, CancerLinQ LLC, will use the SAP HANA® platform in the development of ASCO’s CancerLinQ™. CancerLinQ is a groundbreaking health information technology (HIT) platform that will harness Big Data to deliver high-quality care to patients with cancer. It is one of the only major cancer data initiatives being developed and led by physicians with the primary purpose of improving patient care. 

“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,” said ASCO President Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO. “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.” 

When complete, CancerLinQ is expected to unlock real-world patient care data from millions of electronic health records and more securely process and analyze the data to provide immediate high-quality feedback and clinical decision support to providers. Doctors should be able to receive personalized insights on a scope that was previously unattainable and to help patients gain benefits by having access to high-quality care based on the most up-to-date insights and findings. 

“CancerLinQ will help improve cancer care by delivering the latest information to doctors no matter where they practice so that patients can receive high-quality, state-of-the-art care regardless of where they live,” said Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, and ASCO’s immediate past president. “With CancerLinQ, we can also learn from the care given to the 97 percent of adult patients who do not currently participate in clinical trials.” 

CancerLinQ to leverage the power of SAP HANA

CancerLinQ will be developed using SAP HANA, a flexible, multi-purpose in-memory data management and application platform. By providing advanced capabilities, such as predictive text analytics, spatial processing and data virtualization on the same architecture, it further simplifies application development and processing across big-data sources and structures. This makes SAP HANA a highly suitable platform for building and deploying next-generation, real-time applications and analytics. SAP HANA has already been adopted by global health and medical organizations – and thousands of other institutions – worldwide. For example, SAP has teamed with the National Center for Tumor Diseases in Heidelberg, Germany, to use real-time data analytics to help accelerate cancer research and improve clinical trial matching; in Japan, SAP has teamed with Mitsui Knowledge Industry in Japan to reduce patient-specific genomic analysis for cancer diagnosis from 30 days to 20 minutes. 

“Since every instance of cancer is unique, there is no exact way of knowing which treatments will work for a specific patient,” said Bernd Leukert, Member of the Executive Board of SAP SE, Products & Innovation. “SAP HANA can significantly contribute to patient-centric, personalized care. By analyzing huge amounts of data in cancer patient medical records, it allows doctors to tailor treatments to each patient individually and uncover patterns that improve patient care. We at SAP are broadly committed to the fight against cancer and this important platform.” 

“We are excited to apply the power of SAP HANA to a physician-led healthcare initiative that is aimed at advancing patient care in unprecedented ways,” said David P. Delaney, MD, SAP’s Chief Medical Officer, Americas. “We believe that the CancerLinQ platform represents a huge leap forward in the ability to create insight from massive amounts of data which are not fully leveraged today. This is made possible by combining ASCO’s oncology expertise and proven commitment to patients with the ability of SAP HANA to analyze big data in real-time. I believe that CancerLinQ is positioned to turbocharge the fight against cancer.” 

First version of CancerLinQ scheduled to be available in 2015

ASCO’s CancerLinQ, in cooperation with SAP, is working to develop the first version of CancerLinQ, scheduled for release in late 2015. Eight oncology practices around the U.S. have signed agreements with CancerLinQ to provide patient records for the first version of CancerLinQ. Seven more large cancer centers will soon join this effort, meaning approximately 500,000 patients will be represented in the first version of CancerLinQ. These vanguard practices, which include community practices and large cancer centers, have engaged CancerLinQ to aggregate and analyze a wide range of data and provide reports for quality improvement. Insights gathered from the data are expected to help lay the groundwork for developing the full system, in which oncology practices across the U.S. can participate. CancerLinQ’s vanguard practices include:

• Inova Comprehensive Cancer & Research Institute
• South Coast Centers for Cancer Care
• New England Cancer Specialists
• Medical Oncology Hematology Consultants, PA
• Cancer Treatment Centers of America
• Marin Cancer Care
• Space Coast Cancer Center
• Michiana Hematology-Oncology, P.C.

CancerLinQ LLC will continue to drive the overall development of the platform, with the help of broad input from physicians, patients and experts in relevant disciplines that include quality improvement, health outcomes, epidemiology and health IT. Via CancerLinQ, ASCO will maintain control over the data, services, and products that stem from the platform including clinical decision support tools and analyses. SAP will provide access to customized technologies based on SAP HANA, along with engineering and other technical support from both their standard development ranks and their team specialized in custom application development to help enrich CancerLinQ’s versatility for patients.

CancerLinQ™ is supported by the Conquer Cancer Foundation of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. CancerLinQ is a project of CancerLinQ, LLC. For more information, please visit www.CancerLinQ.org.  

About ASCO
Founded in 1964, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) is the world's leading professional organization representing physicians who care for people with cancer. With more than 35,000 members, ASCO is committed to improving cancer care through scientific meetings, educational programs and peer-reviewed journals. ASCO is supported by its affiliate organization, the Conquer Cancer Foundation, which funds ground-breaking research and programs that make a tangible difference in the lives of people with cancer. For ASCO information and resources, visit www.asco.org. Patient-oriented cancer information is available at www.cancer.net and policy-related developments can be found at www.asco.org/advocacy. 

About CancerLinQ™ LLC
CancerLinQ™ LLC, is a subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) established for the development and operations of the CancerLinQ™ initiative. CancerLinQ™ is a health information technology (HIT) platform aimed at enhancing and improving the understanding and treatment of cancer. To learn more, visitwww.cancerlinq.org. 

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