The September issue of Clinical Lab Products magazine features an article co-authored by Kevin Fitzpatrick, CEO of CancerLinQ LLC, that focuses on how health information technology solutions can help advance cancer care and, in particular, how CancerLinQ™ is helping to break down silos by fostering data sharing and collaboration.

CancerLinQ is ASCO’s big data initiative to rapidly improve the quality of care for people with cancer, and it is operated by CancerLinQ LLC, a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of ASCO. CancerLinQ™ will allow cancer care providers to improve the quality and value of care by analyzing millions of cancer patient medical records, uncovering patterns and trends, and measuring their care against that of their peers and recommended guidelines. The CancerLinQ platform is the only effort of its kind being driven by a non-profit, physician organization.

The article highlights the idea that “the data that oncologists typically leverage for determining treatments are based on a tiny subset—only 3%—of clinical trial patients,” the authors note. By pulling from a larger pool of patients representing the remaining 97% of the population, CancerLinQ can uncover “patterns and insights that will improve patient care.” Additionally, CancerLinQ brings together “structured and unstructured information coming from disparate electronic health record systems.”

The article includes comments from ASCO CEO Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, and ASCO member Robin Zon, MD, FACP, FASCO, an oncologist at a CancerLinQ™ Vanguard Practice. It was co-authored by David Delaney, MD, the Chief Medical Officer of SAP’s Healthcare Sector.

CancerLinQ runs on SAP Connected Health built on the SAP HANA^® platform, a flexible, in-memory data management and application platform created by SAP. Earlier this year, SAP announced that CancerLinQ LLC would be one of the first strategic relationships on SAP Connected Health, which will grow to include an ecosystem of partners that influence every aspect of the cycle of care, from payers to providers to researchers to life sciences companies.

CancerLinQ is a project of CancerLinQ LLC and is supported in part through the Conquer Cancer Foundation, whose generous donors have helped make the system possible. For more information, please visit CancerLinQ.org.