MediSapiens has provided Helsinki University Central Hospital with a bioinformatics platform to support the personalization of leukemia care. The system is designed to help physicians find the best treatment for each patient--and funnel data gained in the field back to support drug R&D initiatives.
Helsinki University Central Hospital contracted MediSapiens to build the custom software platform to improve the service provided by its hematology clinic, which grapples with the task of finding the most effective treatment regimen for people with acute leukemia. By exposing each patient's cancer cells to various drugs and mining the resulting data using MediSapiens' platform, the team at the hematology clinic may be able to eliminate some of the guesswork from the regimen-selection process. And, in the longer term, MediSapiens sees data generated in the process supporting R&D.
For now, the focus is on improving care. "When genomic and clinical data are available in unlimited amounts, data management plays a critical role," Professor Jonathan Knowles of the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland said in a statement. Knowles sees MediSapiens' facilitating improved use of data, and by extension enabling superior patient care and new research opportunities. "Treatment can be considerably more effective if treatment decisions are based on individual data, and similar methods can certainly also be applied to other types of cancer," he said.
The software is currently being trialed at the clinic, with a view to rolling it out more widely next year. If the platform takes off as MediSapiens hopes, it will support improved patient care, while also gathering data that could support drug R&D in the future. MediSapiens plans to use the platform to "collect unique data which can be used in cancer research and development of new medicinal combinations," the Helsinki-based bio IT specialist said in a statement.
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