The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation has moved to the leading edge of healthcare with a new research and patient care move to the cloud.
WHAT HAPPENED
The foundation has launched the MMRF CureCloud, a centralized data hub that generates, aggregates and visualizes data to accelerate the delivery of precision medicine to multiple myeloma patients.
The CureCloud is a critical part of the organization’s three-year plan, which is to transform patient care through addressing the medical industry’s biggest challenge: data sharing and collection.
The MMRF is working with Broad Genomics, Broad Data Science Platform, COTA, Tempus, EMSI Health, Prometheus Research and PierianDx to address a fundamental, and complex, challenge in healthcare that is often overlooked – the need for shared, comprehensive data to identify targets and inform data-driven treatment decisions for multiple myeloma patients.
WHY IT MATTERS
Given that multiple myeloma is a highly heterogenous disease, substantial amounts of genomic, immune and clinical data needs to be curated and shared across physicians, researchers and patients to drive more effective treatments, the foundation explained.
“One of the biggest problems that exists within today’s healthcare system is lack of access to significant quantities of high-quality longitudinal patient data,” said Kathy Giusti, co-founder and chief mission officer at the MMRF. “As a patient-founded and focused organization, we are committed to making the changes needed to transform the healthcare system and find ways to empower patients so that they can make informed decisions about their care.”
“One of the biggest problems that exists within today’s healthcare system is lack of access to significant quantities of high-quality longitudinal patient data.”
Kathy Giusti, Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation
One of the first steps in achieving this goal is to take on the challenging task of bringing together genomic data, immune data and electronic health records across a wide variety of patients to create CureCloud, she added.
The CureCloud model will include the MMRF’s CoMMpassSM study, the largest genomic dataset in any cancer, which identified 12 unique sub-types within myeloma, as well as other MMRF legacy assets and external data sources. Patient data will be de-identified and securely stored, the foundation said.
The MMRF will provide access to this data to every stakeholder in the multiple myeloma ecosystem. A suite of analytics and visualization tools will enable patients and their doctors to compare clinical and genomic data with patients in the CureCloud to help inform treatment decisions, and researchers to identify new targets and generate hypotheses.
ON THE RECORD
“Creating this standards-based, fully-linked, unified data hub that drives data to knowledge, knowledge to insights, and insights to value, will be answering the most critical clinical questions while supporting the identification of new targets and care pathways,” said Dr. Steve Labkoff, chief data officer at the MMRF. “This is an exceptionally complex and demanding goal.
“It is thanks to the willingness of our partners and the MMRF’s legacy data assets that we are able to collect and aggregate massive amounts of research and clinical data, building one of the most comprehensive and complex systems I have ever seen,” Labkoff asserted.
THE LARGER TREND
On the precision medicine front, just this week, the Biden Cancer Initiative’s Oncology Clinical Trial Information Commons – a shared platform where information about clinical trials can be stored and accessed for patient matching and other data mining – partnered with precision medicine and clinical trial matching specialist Massive Bio with the aim of improving access and reducing redundancies in the platform.
Currently, many patients are unable to find the clinical trial options that would be relevant for them, and publicly available information about clinical trials is not readily searchable due to syntax inaccuracy – all things the commons aims to improve.
Massive Bio’s precision medicine approach is based on a genetic understanding of the patient, allowing doctors to better select treatments most likely to help those patients.
The company provides clinical trial services such as patient identification, pre-screening, site selection and real-world evidence services. Massive Bio’s Synergy AI machine learning engine identifies clinical trial options for patients from institutions across the world and helps patients choose which trials, if any, would best support their cancer treatment.
“Creating this standards-based, fully-linked, unified data hub that drives data to knowledge, knowledge to insights, and insights to value, will be answering the most critical clinical questions while supporting the identification of new targets and care pathways.”
Dr. Steve Labkoff, Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation
Elsewhere, in April, Sutter Health and biomedical informatics and data management DNAnexus partnered on a study to improve personalized treatments for people with multiple sclerosis. As part of the partnership, the Genome Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center will generate clinical-grade genomic data from samples contributed by the program’s participants.
Scientists at Sutter’s Center for Precision Medicine will input de-identified clinico-genomic datasets from more than 3,000 patients to DNAnexus’s Apollo platform for analysis and visualization, as well as to enable collaboration.
In the study’s first phase of 500 patients, scientists will collect electronic health record data, patient-reported outcomes, imaging data and blood samples, as well as whole exome sequencing (WES) performed by UPMC.
Then the DNAnexus team will process WES data through analysis pipelines and link the resulting genetic data with extensive clinical data on Apollo.
Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
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