Paris, November 15th, 2021 – The partnership will allow INCa (Institut National du Cancer) accredited hospitals of early phase (CLIP) and to industrial sponsors to improve the collection, identification, and characterization of adverse events, as well as the evaluation of their imputability to the treatment, thus improving the development of cancer drugs and patient care.
A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP TO DEVELOP A DIGITAL PLATFORM ENRICHED BY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The Institut de Cancérologie de l’Ouest, an expert center in oncology based in Angers and Nantes, Deeplink Medical, a Lyon-based company digitizing medical imaging and offering solutions for patient pathway optimization, and Quinten Health, a Paris-based company specialized in the analysis of real-world data and in design and development of decision support solutions based on artificial intelligence, have announced a strategic partnership to augment the collection and evaluation of data in early phase clinical trials in oncology.
The main objective of this partnership is to develop a digital platform enhanced by artificial intelligence and aimed at standardizing the collection of adverse events data.
EARLY PHASE TRIALS: INNOVATING TO OPTIMIZE DATA COLLECTION
Today, between 500 and 600 trials are managed by the ICO’s teams in Nantes and Anjou, including about forty early phase trials. The collection of adverse events data is an essential step of clinical trials. This data collected throughout the trials constitute an essential source of information.
In early phase trials, the documentation of adverse events occurring between treatment courses represents a significant amount of work, which can be optimized, consolidated, and standardized.
Indeed, a patient during the consultation might forget certain side effects, their nature, their intensity, and their date of onset. The data entry can also sometimes be incomplete or lacking in precision. Similarly, the evaluation of the imputability of these adverse events can be improved and and objectified.
This issue, which is addressed by the ICO’s physicians and CRAs (Clinical Research Associates) gave birth to the “INTERCURE” project, which aims at answering the following questions:
- How to improve the quality and evaluation of the collected data?
- How to save time in the collection of information for the physician and the clinical research team?
- How to maintain a link with the patient between treatments during an early phase trial?
“Collecting side effects data, in real time and by the patient, is essential for the development of new drugs via therapeutic trials. This is the INTERCURE project!” explains Dr. Victor SIMMET, Medical Oncologist at ICO in Angers.
“To be able to meet the requirements of Good Clinical Practices while saving time, increasing completeness and improving the traceability, this is essential for us“, says Gwenaëlle LEWRICH, clinical research investigator at ICO in Nantes.
TWO EXPERTISES COMPLETING THAT OF ICO
Deeplink Medical, a specialist in innovative digital solutions for the medical sector, brings to the project its technologies and know-how to:
- Standardize the collection of adverse events data, and facilitate the communication around the data
- Save time for all those involved in the collection process, and each of its stages
- Guarantee perfect traceability
- Consolidate structured and easily exploitable data
The contribution of Quinten Health, a specialist in artificial intelligence-powered data analysis and decision support in the health sector, will focus on the objectification of adverse events immutability to treatments.
“We are delighted to be able to work with the ICO and Quinten Health teams to meet the need for patient selfreporting and the reporting of adverse events by healthcare professionals. We will make it possible to collect the adverse events data in a secure, systematic and structured way, to improve their care even further improve their care by the center’s medical team, while facilitating research,” says Hugues LAJOIE, CEO and co-founder of Deeplink Medical.
“The quality of the information collected on the patient experience is crucial, especially in the context of early stage oncology trials. It conditions the ability of healthcare professionals to adapt their therapeutic decisions and the ability of pharmaceutical companies to detect potential signals. The combination of ICO’s clinical expertise, Deeplink Medical’s proven digital technologies know how, and real-life data science combined with our artificial intelligence technologies, allows us to collectively provide an original and effective response to this need,” comments Alexandre TEMPLIER, President and co-founder of Quinten Health
The project started on October 21, 2021 with the kick-off meeting of the entire Project Team. Alongside Quinten Health and Deeplink Medical, the team include the Nantes-Angers ICO physicians: Marie ROBERT, Victor SIMMET, Fréderic BIGOT, Gwenaëlle LEWANDOWSKI, as well as the members of the Clinical Research Department and of the Information Systems Department.
