Cancer Centers

Cancer Centers face unique challenges for advanced clinical data management and informatics solutions in both patient care and translational research domains. While specialized tools are designed to address Cancer Center requirements, there is a growing need to integrate them with more general purpose systems found within the Cancer Center, across the broader institutional infrastructure, and in multi-center grid-enabled research.

Oncology patients often receive care in settings outside the Cancer Center, generating valuable data in Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and other systems where the Cancer Center has little or no visibility. This may occur in other parts of the Academic Medical Center environment, or in community-based care settings. The integration of data in the Cancer Center with other clinical data is important in providing quality patient care, as well as effectively participating in Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and other frameworks requiring care coordination across provider groups.

Complicating this picture is the increasing importance and continually evolving role of genetic data in cancer research and patient care. Research is increasingly dependent on the ability to execute complex genetically aware adaptive studies to personalize protocols to patients based upon measurable biomarker attributes of tumors and patient genotype. And the rapid evolution of biomarker platforms to generate Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNP) data and low-cost Next Generation Sequence data sets increases the need for systems that can manage high data volumes and analyze them effectively through high performance computing tools.

At the same time, the emphasis on enterprise-wide approaches and collaboration across institutions in translational research through the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) and other programs, has generated significant investment in improved global infrastructure to support core research activities. These infrastructure components include:

• Clinical data warehousing
• Bio-banking systems
• Electronic Case Report Form (CRF) data capture
• Bioinformatics analytics
• Clinical trial management systems
• Research administration.

These advances in translational research infrastructure present an opportunity for Cancer Centers to share data and research tools with institutional partners.

As a result, Cancer Centers have an opportunity to share data and informatics tools to integrate their work with other groups within their own enterprises, with other Academic Medical Centers and research organizations, and with community-based provider groups.

Recombinant By Deloitte's experience in both genetics and translational research informatics is key to the solutions we deliver to Cancer Centers. Recombinant By Deloitte combines strategic consulting, project planning, software development, implementation, and support services for effective solutions that enable Cancer Centers to:

• Maintain an innovative and competitive informatics toolset that can evolve to meet current and future demands, including translational research, clinical performance improvement, and new models for patient care and reimbursement
• Leverage general purpose and standards-based open source tools to facilitate collaborative interoperability and reduce overall ownership costs for informatics tools and infrastructure
• Complement and extend current enterprise initiatives in other areas of translational research informatics
• Establish data sharing frameworks and tools for meaningful relationships with hospital and ambulatory care organizations.

Solution components:

• Consulting Expertise for
   
  • Institutional data strategy, governance, and Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) / Institutional Review Board (IRB) compliance
  • Collaborative framework development between the Cancer Center, AMC partners, and other research and provider groups
  • Data warehousing, bio-banking, prep-to-research, and clinical trial workflows and data flows
• Recombinant By Deloitte Data Trust clinical data warehouse
• Project planning, rapid pilot implementation, and production deployment of open source tools for translational research
• Recombinant By Deloitte Meta-Registry and Meaningful Use Solutions
• Profiles Research Networking Software¹ for research collaboration, professional networking, and experienced mining
• Research Permissions Management System for collecting and managing patient consent data in a structured, computable format
• Interfaces and utilities linking caBIG® components, CTSA tools, and commercial analytics tools and data sources
• Implementation of high-performance computing systems and analytics tools for studying large scale genomic data sets
• Knowledge management and multi-modality biomarker data solution integrating open source search and analytical tools, published data sets, and local (client) data sets.

Benefits:

• Utilize solutions delivered by specialists who understand Cancer Center research and clinical operations processes
• Create innovative approaches to link Cancer Center translational research and patient care more closely with institutional and external Cancer Center partners through common governance, tools, and shared data
• Leverage leading practices knowledge drawn from Recombinant By Deloitte's relationships with a broad range of Cancer Centers and other institutions across the country
• Integrate leading open source tools, commercial products, and custom development to facilitate collaborations across institutions, accelerate delivery of tangible benefits to stakeholders, reduce project risk, and lower long-term total cost of ownership
• Avoid isolated data silos, reduce duplicated work and wasted resources, and reduce compliance risks with Recombinant By Deloitte's enterprise-wide approach to using clinical data to support translational research, clinical performance improvement, and financial objectives.

For more information about how Recombinant By Deloitte can address the individual challenges of leveraging data for translational research and clinical performance improvement in the Cancer Center environment, contact Recombinant By Deloitte at results@recomdata.com.

(1) Profiles Research Networking Software was developed under the supervision of Griffin M Weber, MD, PhD, with support from Grant Number 1 UL1 RR025758-01 to Harvard Catalyst, The Harvard Clinical and Translational Science Center from the National Center for Research Resources and support from Harvard University and its affiliated academic health care centers.

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