Oracle, the cloud vendor and owner of Cerner electronic health record, will support the White House’s National Cancer Moonshot public-private partnership's overall goal to reduce cancer death rates through the CancerX project. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the CancerX website. Cancer survivors are also 2.5 times more likely to declare bankruptcy.

In Tuesday's announcement from Oracle, the company said its role in CancerX aims to define the value of digital innovation in cancer treatment, address methodological and implementation gaps, and develop best practices for the equitable adoption of digital health technologies at scale in oncology.

Shruti Iyer, principal innovation architect supporting clinical innovation at Oracle Life Sciences and the lead for the Oracle team on CancerX, explained to Healthcare IT News Wednesday that the first action is focused on advancing digital innovation to improve equity and reducing financial toxicity in cancer care and research.

Pointing to a recent McKinsey study, access to healthcare for cancer patients is limited by two chief constraints: affordability and availability.

"For many patients, such as those in rural areas, the limited availability of providers and the costs associated with travel and time away from work are barriers to care," she said. 

"These are magnified in the case of cancer patients."

The Moffitt Cancer Center, Digital Medicine Society, Office for the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health are creating an ecosystem through CancerX to exchange ideas, expertise and resources so innovative systems can be rapidly and equitably deployed, Santosh Mohan, vice president of digital for the Moffitt Cancer Center, said in the statement.

"The healthcare market continues to be highly fragmented, which hinders both patient care and the quest for a cure," added Seema Verma, senior vice president and general manager of Oracle Life Sciences. 

"We are proud to bring our expertise in healthcare, clinical research and enterprise cloud technology to deliver more innovative and effective treatments to those fighting cancer."

THE LARGER TREND

Back in 2016, the Department of Veterans Affairs and IBM Watson Health launched a public-private partnership under then Vice President Joe Biden’s National Cancer Moonshot to provide veterans with cancer a better shot at recovery.

The collaboration was designed to better parse through the sheer volume of data and enhance the speed of genomic treatment options for veterans.

At HIMSS23, Mohan told HIMSSTV Insider that more public-private collaboration is needed for oncology innovation.

He described how Moffitt is pairing clinical care with next-generation technology – digital radiology, digital pathology, next-generation sequencing and more are hallmarks of oncology – but the field grapples with "two realities" when it comes to digital innovations.

"Many of these things are not the standard of care for many patients. So, there is a lot of work to do to expand that access and reach of those breakthroughs," Mohan said.

Also lagging behind several other therapeutic areas in basic digital healthcare delivery innovations like scheduling, cancer providers do not have advanced solutions that meet the complexities of cancer care, such as scheduling six appointments in one day for a patient, he noted. 

Mohan credited CancerX for helping to articulate the challenges in cancer care delivery that are best suited for digital solutions.

ON THE RECORD

"Multi-stakeholder collaboration is critical to harness the potential of digital innovation in the fight against cancer, and we're honored to partner with Oracle to achieve the ambitious goals of CancerX,” Smit Patel, DiMe's associate program director, said in a statement. "Through this impressive collaboration, we will establish best practices, build capacity and demonstrate the impact of innovation on the life of every person on a cancer journey."

"Together, we will advance the frontiers of cancer research and treatment through digital innovation, while striving to reduce the incidence and burden of cancer for all people," Mohan added.

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.