Miami Cancer Institute to Address Care Gaps Through Analytics Partnership

Miami Cancer Institute has partnered with COTA to eliminate disparities by using data and analytics to examine how patient demographics such as ethnicity and area of residence affect the quality of cancer care.

Miami Cancer Institute is a branch of Baptist Health South Florida that provides clinical treatment and support services for cancer patients.

COTA specializes in oncology and analytics, using data to define novel and practical approaches to cancer care.

In the new collaboration, the organizations will use EHR and claims data to define and analyze disparities in cancer care and develop strategies to eliminate them.

This builds on an existing partnership between Miami Cancer Institute and COTA. The institute's physicians used COTA's analytics platform to glean insights from testing patterns for the BRCA gene between 2018 and 2019. The analysis led to the implementation of blanket BRCA mutation testing for newly diagnosed breast cancer patients.

"With our expanded partnership, we'll be collaborating with COTA on research that analyzes the impact a patient's demographics may have on the stage of their cancer diagnosis," said Leonard Kalman, MD, executive deputy director, and chief medical officer at Miami Cancer Institute, in the press release. "Delayed cancer diagnosis for a patient frequently leads to poorer outcomes. Our hope is that this collaborative research will identify the patients who are most at-risk for delayed diagnosis so we can increase education and expand access to routine cancer screenings for these populations."

The COVID-19 pandemic also exacerbated issues surrounding cancer care delivery. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stated that the pandemic highlighted the immense role that social determinants of health played in the risk of developing diseases and treatment outcomes. Further, cancer care, particularly screenings, took a hard hit as COVID-19 cases soared, making the renewed effort to increase screenings and early detection even more necessary.

Previous studies have also revealed the entrenched disparities in cancer care.

A study from March 2020 published in Scientific Reports revealed that Black and Hispanic pediatric patients with brain cancer faced disparities in treatment. The study consisted of 1,881 patients younger than 19 years who received a diagnosis of either cancer of the brain or the central nervous system. Researchers observed that 52 percent of White patients within the sample lived for five years following diagnosis, compared with 44 percent of Black and 45 percent of Hispanic patients.

To enhance cancer treatment and access, some in the healthcare industry are looking to artificial intelligence (AI).

In January, Case Western Reserve University created an AI algorithm to assist in defining which cases of head and neck cancers require lower levels of radiation and chemotherapy. The algorithm analyzes digital images of tissue samples and detects patients who do not require high levels of cancer therapies.