Utah Cancer Specialists Implements XIFIN VisualStrata to Provide Care Teams with Improved Data Insights
May 18, 2020
Award-winning precision medicine informatics platform integrates data from disparate systems to provide clinicians with greater patient insights and supports value-based care initiatives
Precision medicine is especially promising in oncology care, but the massive amounts of data that exists – often in silos – makes it challenging for clinicians to take full advantage of potential insights that can lead to individualized patient care. To help oncologists and their teams aggregate, analyze and make better use of multiple data sources when treating their patients, XIFIN today announced that VisualStrata® is being implemented as the strategic solution to improve treatment processes for Utah Cancer Specialists, the largest community-based oncology and hematology treatment practice in Utah. VisualStrata® is the only precision medicine informatics platform on the market that curates and visualizes diagnostic, clinical, image and financial data across the patient journey through diagnosis, treatment and outcomes.
A recent survey among respondents who are directly involved with precision medicine efforts at their organization found that unstructured data curation and annotation was the number one IT challenge for precision medicine programs (61%)1. VisualStrata uniquely collates structured and unstructured data from disparate systems into a single source, providing healthcare professionals with deeper insights into optimal disease treatments and driving personalized care decisions. Utah Cancer Specialists is implementing VisualStrata to enable oncology care teams to manage and draw insights from their data to better understand how their patients are responding to care and to meet healthcare quality reporting requirements. This includes the Oncology Care Model (OCM) reporting required by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The OCM is a payment and delivery model that aims to provide higher quality, more highly coordinated oncology care at the same or lower cost to Medicare. Under the OCM, physician practices like Utah Cancer Specialists have entered into compensation arrangements that include financial and performance accountability for episodes of care surrounding chemotherapy administration to cancer patients. Utah Cancer Specialists will use VisualStrata to enhance care team collaboration, image management, healthcare analytics and visualization.
"We chose VisualStrata based on its ability to aggregate biomarker data from multiple sources and combine it with clinical data from our EMR," said Randy Erickson, CEO, Utah Cancer Specialists. "By working with the XIFIN team we will be able to add significant improvements to our program. The platform will allow us to run a retrospective analysis of patient trends over time to improve our ability to identify appropriate patients for clinical trials and will allow us to better position ourselves as we move from fee-for-service towards value-based care."
Utah Cancer physicians provide medical oncology, hematology, radiation oncology and imaging services and have expertise in every type of cancer, including rare malignancies. The community practice also actively participates in clinical research and is on the cutting edge of translating laboratory findings into more effective and less traumatic treatments.
"Focusing on patient-linked variables such as a patient’s geographic region, the origin of the ordering clinician and details of the treatment itself are tremendously important markers to determine treatment effectiveness at community oncology centers, where more than half of all Americans battling cancer receive treatment," said Patricia Goede, PhD, VP Clinical Informatics, XIFIN. "To accomplish this, oncologists and physicians need a platform that collects and compares crucial information to help inform individual testing and treatment decisions, and to document the complete patient journey over time. At the end of the day, aggregating all the available data in a collected, well-structured approach will allow community oncology teams, like those at Utah Cancer Specialists, to deliver quality reporting and patient care."
Industry Recognition for Early Contributions to Precision Medicine
After launching VisualStrata in early 2019, XIFIN quickly earned industry attention. Most recently, Frost & Sullivan awarded XIFIN the 2019 Enabling Technology Leadership Award in recognition of the strategic thought leadership, innovation and performance shown in the precision medicine informatics industry.
"The evolving complex data ecosystem that enables precision medicine programs dmonstrates a true Big Data challenge," said Kamaljit Behera, Senior Industry Analyst, Transformational Health, Frost & Sullivan. "XIFIN uniquely designed VisualStrata, a precision medicine informatics platform, to add a whole different layer of analytics that is crucial to mining information from various touch points across the healthcare ecosystem. VisualStrata is unique because rarely do systems have the capability to digest multiple types of data such as image files, diagnostic test reports and information from numerous other sources."
Earlier this year XIFIN began a study with the Journal of Precision Medicine, which initially found that approximately 60% of participants said their enterprise system did not meet, or partially met, their needs as precision medicine users. The study is ongoing, and its complete findings will be published later this year as part of the second annual research report. To participate, or request a customized report for your organization, please visit www.visualstrata.com/pmisurvey.
Sources:
1. "The Value of Precision Medicine Informatics Initiatives Adoption: Uses, Challenges, and Approaches" Global Research Report, 2019
About XIFIN
XIFIN is a healthcare information technology company that leverages diagnostic information to improve the quality and economics of healthcare. The company's cloud-based technology facilitates connectivity and workflow automation for accessing and sharing clinical and financial diagnostic data, linking healthcare stakeholders in the delivery and reimbursement of care. To learn more, visit www.XIFIN.com, follow XIFIN on Twitter , and LinkedIn, or subscribe to the XIFIN blog.