ASCO Sells CancerLinQ:ConcertAI has acquired CancerLinQ, an oncology-focused real-world data service, from the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), for an undisclosed amount.
Cambridge, Mass.-based ConcertAI is a for-profit company focused on oncology real-world data, digital-accelerated clinical trial solutions, and clinical artificial intelligence imaging interpretation. The nonprofit ASCO represents nearly 50,000 oncology professionals who care for people living with cancer.
A story in Cancer Letter noted that ConcertAI, through a predecessor firm called Precision Health AI, has been working with ASCO for five years, curating and licensing the data in CancerLinQ.
Cancer Letter author Paul Goldberg asked if the practices that provided data to ASCO, a nonprofit, would now provide the data to a for-profit entity operating in a competitive market.
“I hope so, because I think that their experience—the value they perceive from their engagement—is going to become a better one,” ASCO’s Chief Executive Officer Clifford Hudis, M.D. responded. “I don’t want to speak for whatever ConcertAI may choose to do with CancerLinQ, but I think that the quality of the services that they receive should rapidly improve.”
In conjunction with the acquisition, ASCO will maintain a multi-year cooperation agreement with CancerLinQ, which was launched by ASCO in 2013. ConcertAI said the new venture will enhance and expand CancerLinQ’s use of real-world data, analytics, next-generation AI, and other technologies to improve cancer care and speed clinical research.
CancerLinQ represents one of the largest oncology real-world data and quality of care technology services entities in the world, bringing together clinical data from most major EHR systems. With a network of more than 100 cancer centers and oncology practices, 10 EHR system integrations, and data from nearly seven million patient records, CancerLinQ empowers oncology care teams and researchers with technology and data innovations to improve care and accelerate cancer research.
CancerLinQ will remain focused on quality and advancing the principles of precision medicine, expanding real-world data for a broader set of research purposes, and supporting a new clinical trials initiative evolving from CancerLinQ’s TriaLinQ concepts. CancerLinQ will work closely with ASCO to prioritize the needs of oncology practices and support the expansion of the practice network.
“We believe this agreement will provide the resources to fulfill and amplify CancerLinQ’s impact, while allowing ASCO to harness the CancerLinQ platform for quality improvement initiatives and CancerLinQ Discovery data for research to support our mission,” said ASCO’s Hudis in a statement. “We expect CancerLinQ to be an important avenue for practices to achieve certification under ASCO’s recently launched ASCO Certified program.”
“CancerLinQ may be one of the most important oncology networks in existence. We are pleased and privileged to be able to advance the original quality improvement goals and follow-on research interests of CancerLinQ in collaboration with ASCO, with urgency and alacrity,” said Jeff Elton, Ph.D., CEO of ConcertAI, in a statement. “We are committing more than $250 million to the quality solutions, data solutions, and novel clinical trial solutions over the coming few years to achieve the highest quality care, accelerate needed new biomedical innovations, and assure the best possible outcomes for patients.”
ConcertAI will collaborate with ASCO to substantially enhance the value of CancerLinQ for oncology practices and their patients by:
• Bolstering SmartLinQ to include new data sources alongside the robust clinical data currently available
• Making clinical trials participation more accessible and less burdensome through ConcertAI’s Digital Access to Clinical Trial (DACT) platform
• Developing more robust clinical decision support within SmartLinQ
• Supporting automated EHR integration, bringing SmartLinQ seamlessly into practices’ workflows
“The scope and scale of what CancerLinQ and ConcertAI can accomplish together is unprecedented,” said Eric P. Winer, M.D., chair of the board of ASCO, in a statement. “We’ve successfully built a real-world data platform that delivers actionable insights to the cancer community – and now CancerLinQ is poised to sustain and increase its impact for oncology practices and patients for the long term.”
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