Alexandria, VA, October 21, 2017 – CancerLinQ LLC and the data services companies Tempus and ConcertAI (formerly aka Precision HealthAI) announced today they have entered into an agreement that will accelerate development and delivery of high-quality, de-identified clinical databases for use by CancerLinQ®, its oncologist subscribers, partners, and the broader cancer community. The agreement will also enable CancerLinQ to more quickly build and expand on its core data sharing and quality improvement platform for oncology practices, and facilitate Tempus’ and ConcertAI’s connection to industry to support faster and better development of new treatments for patients.
Through the new agreement, Tempus and ConcertAI will curate data into high-quality datasets to be used to improve quality of cancer care and for research. These datasets will be made available through the core CancerLinQ® quality improvement platform and CancerLinQ Discovery™, a service that provides access to high-quality, de-identified datasets for non-profit organizations, health care providers, academic researchers, and government agencies. Tempus and Precision HealthAI will bring these de-identified datasets to industry partners to produce practical applications such as targeted therapies, more efficient clinical trials, and data-driven analyses to help determine which therapies are producing the greatest patient benefit. Royalties from this license will help to support ASCO’s CancerLinQ® initiative.
“Tempus and Precision HealthAI bring first-rate technical capacity that complements CancerLinQ’s existing strengths,” said Clifford Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO, CEO of ASCO and Chairman of the CancerLinQ Board of Governors. “They share our vision for improving patient care and have the right combination of experience and commitment to innovation to help us provide useful information, faster, to subscribing practices and the entire cancer community.”
“At Tempus, we have built a platform to help usher in an era of precision medicine, empowering physicians with the tools and information they need to improve patient outcomes,” said Eric Lefkofsky, founder and CEO at Tempus. “Building on the vast network that CancerLinQ has established, our team will apply sophisticated technology tools to this large body of clinical and molecular data to help power cutting-edge research and produce actionable clinical insights.”
“We are developing an innovative AI platform for the management, delivery and use of clinical data. Our experienced team of health care data and technology professionals focus on developing artificial Intelligence and machine learning-driven solutions for a range of oncology stakeholders,” said Romesh Wadhwani, PhD, Chairman of ConcertAI. “Applying our technology solution to de-identified CancerLinQ data will help the broader community to accelerate research and the development and administration of new therapies.”
Under the new license arrangement, CancerLinQ will retain its non-profit status and remain responsible for data integration and providing a platform of meaningful tools and reports to participating oncologists and oncology care sites. Tempus and ConcertAI will be responsible for further structuring this dataset to put it to work for the benefit of patients.
“Our commitment to oncologists and the patients they serve is stronger than ever and this collaboration will allow us to deliver cutting-edge clinical tools and enhanced benefits to the cancer centers participating in CancerLinQ,” said CancerLinQ LLC Chief Executive Officer Kevin Fitzpatrick. “As a result of the technical and financial contributions of Tempus and Precision HealthAI, CancerLinQ aims to accelerate the pace of new quality improvement services to its subscribers.”
The agreement with Tempus and ConcertAI is part of a broad group of collaborations that CancerLinQ LLC has established with government agencies, medical specialty societies, and life sciences companies, including American Society of Radiation Oncology, Food and Drug Administration, Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association, National Cancer Institute, Oncology Nursing Society, and Society of Gynecologic Oncology. In addition, in November 2016, AstraZeneca became a founding enterprise partner with CancerLinQ Discovery™.
CancerLinQ also recently reached a key milestone with more than 100 oncology practices in 40 states and the District of Columbia now signed up to participate. They account for more than 2,000 medical oncologists and have contributed more than a million cancer patient records in the database.
CancerLinQ is supported in part through ASCO’s Conquer Cancer Foundation, whose generous donors have helped make the system possible. Major supporters include Amgen; Astellas; AstraZeneca; Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals Inc.; Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc.; Cancer Treatment Centers of America®; Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation; Genentech BioOncology™; HELSINN; Janssen Oncology; Lilly; Raj Mantena, RPh; Novartis Oncology; Pfizer Oncology; Thomas G. Roberts, Jr., MD and Susan M. DaSilva; and Susan G. Komen®.
CancerLinQ LLC is a wholly-owned non-profit subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO). CancerLinQ® and CancerLinQ Discovery™ are projects of CancerLinQ LLC, a non-profit subsidiary of ASCO. For more information on how to participate or partner with CancerLinQ, please visit CancerLinQ.org.