The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) announced it has completed a prototype of CancerLinQ, a collection of data from approximately 100,000 breast cancer patients treated at different cancer centers throughout the U.S.
The organization debuted the prototype system at an ASCO-hosted panel discussion on transforming cancer care through big data, held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on March 27.
The prototype demonstrates the feasibility of a healthcare-IT-based learning system, ASCO said. CancerLinQ is being used to develop a computer network that will collect and analyze cancer care data from millions of patient visits to generate real-time, personalized guidance and quality feedback for physicians. The system is designed to anonymously acquire real-time data from electronic health records (EHR) for patients being treated at any participating cancer center, regardless of the EHR software being used.
In addition to real-time data collection, CancerLinQ's core functions will include the following:
- Clinical decision support and individualized guidance recommendations based on the collective experiences of other similar patients.
- Data mining and visualization, including patient characteristics, treatments, and outcomes, to identify real-world trends and new hypotheses for research.
- Quality feedback on physician performance using 10 quality measures of ASCO's Quality Oncology Practice Initiative (QOPI).
