COTA, a real-world data (RWD) and analytics company focused on cancer treatments, has announced it is entering a new research partnership with MedStar Health, currently the largest healthcare provider in the Maryland/Washington, DC region. COTA reportedly will support MedStar Health in its use of RWD to accelerate scientific discoveries, and to improve the care of oncology patients.
The MedStar cancer treatment team (which includes the MedStar Health Cancer Network and the MedStar Georgetown Cancer Institute) delivers oncology care to patients across a total of 10 sites. The Institute’s academic cancer partner, Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, — is one of 51 comprehensive cancer centers in the nation to receive this designation by the National Cancer Institute.
Neil Weissman, president of MedStar Health Research Institute and chief scientific officer for MedStar Health, said the collaboration stands to benefit people living with cancer, and those who have not yet received a diagnosis.
“Our partnership with COTA will support our ongoing efforts to leverage deep clinical data to power research that will improve outcomes for cancer patients,” Weissman said. “As a leader in oncology real-world data, we are excited to work with COTA to drive innovative research that will change how cancer is studied and treated.”
Louis Weiner, director of the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center and the MedStar Georgetown Cancer Institute, said effective collection and analysis of data can be hugely beneficial in discovering new oncological therapies.
“Collecting and understanding data is becoming increasingly important to how we select cancer treatments for individuals,” Weiner said. “The Institute’s research collaboration with COTA will help accelerate advances and enhance our goal of providing our patients with tomorrow’s cancer treatments, today.”
COTA provides oncology real-world data abstraction, curation, and analytics capabilities to healthcare provider organizations and life sciences companies that are caring for and developing treatments for patients living with a wide range of cancers. The company combines oncology expertise with technology-enabled data abstraction techniques to curate meaningful, longitudinal, and de-identified datasets.
Mike Doyle, COTA’s CEO, said, “At COTA we serve as a critical bridge between healthcare providers and the researchers who can accelerate clinical development to make life-saving treatments available to patients faster. We are proud to collaborate with MedStar Health, a well-respected leader in oncology, to advance scientific discovery with representative and diverse real-world data.”
Earlier this year, COTA announced a collaboration with researchers at the University of Chicago Medicine. That partnership is geared toward studying disparities in care for people with multiple myeloma, a cancer that disproportionately impacts Black patients.
