Intermountain Healthcare, Stanford Cancer Institute, Providence Health & Services, Catholic Health Initiative and Henry Ford Health System have joined with precision medicine company Syapse for OPeN, the Oncology Precision Network.

With a commitment today at Vice President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot Summit, the data sharing collaborative hopes to more quickly bring promising treatment insights to cancer treatment though more robust exchange of genomic information, aiming for increased access to clinical trials.

The network's members expect an immediate 100,000 datasets in the OPeN database. At full speed, the collaborative should impact some 50,000 new cancer patients per year - 3 percent of the total in the U.S. The group comprises data and physicians across 11 states, 79 hospitals and 800 clinics and hopes to add more - pledging to onboard at least 20 new sites in the next 15 months.

"This consortium exists because we all arrived at the same important conclusion: we need to collaborate across health systems to cure cancer," said Lincoln Nadauld, MD, executive director of Intermountain Precision Genomics, in a press statement. "Through collaboration, we emphasize the need to learn together to empower physicians and patients in finding solutions to cancer without increasing costs."

"The highest quality cancer care is predicated on clinical trial participation and currently very few cancer patients can access trials that are matched based on the genetic make-up of their cancer," added Thomas Brown, MD, co-chair of Providence Health & Services Personalized Medicine Program. "This partnership will further our efforts to provide customized therapies that are based on the biological features of both the patient and their unique cancer."

"By aggregating all of our real patient experiences, we will rapidly expand our ability to learn how to choose the best targeted treatments for our cancer patients based on the molecular profile of their tumor and our informatics based research," said Jim Ford, MD, director of Clinical Cancer Genomics at the Stanford Cancer Institute.

As it brings on new members, OPeN plans to focus more on community health systems beyond its current membership, hoping to reach connect patients in other geographic regions of the U.S. with clinical trial opportunities.

"Solving the complexities of cancer will require the formation of new alliances to defy the bounds of innovation and accelerate the prevention, diagnosis, treatment and - ultimately - a cure," Vice President Biden has said. "It’s going to require millions of Americans speaking up and contributing what they’re able."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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