On December 11, ConcertAI announced the acquisition of CancerLinQ, previously a subsidiary of ASCO. In conjunction with the acquisition, ASCO will maintain a multiyear cooperation agreement with CancerLinQ. Building on CancerLinQ’s mission when launched by ASCO in 2013, this new venture will enhance and expand CancerLinQ’s use of real-world data, analytics, next-generation artificial intelligence (AI), and other technologies to improve cancer care and speed clinical research.
CancerLinQ represents one of the largest oncology real-world data and quality of care technology service entities in the world, uniquely bringing together clinical data from most major electronic medical record (EMR) systems. With a network of more than 100 cancer centers and oncology practices, 10 EMR system integrations, and data from nearly 7 million patient records, CancerLinQ empowers oncology care teams and researchers with technology and data innovations to improve care and accelerate cancer research.
CancerLinQ will remain focused on quality and advancing the principles of precision medicine, expanding real-world data for a broader set of research purposes and supporting a new clinical trials initiative evolving from CancerLinQ’s TriaLinQ concepts. CancerLinQ will work closely with ASCO to prioritize the needs of oncology practices and support the expansion of the practice network.
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO
“We believe this agreement will provide the resources to fulfill and amplify CancerLinQ’s impact, while allowing ASCO to harness the CancerLinQ platform for quality improvement initiatives and CancerLinQ Discovery data for research to support our mission,” said ASCO Chief Executive Officer Clifford A. Hudis, MD, FACP, FASCO. “We expect CancerLinQ to be an important avenue for practices to achieve certification under ASCO’s recently launched ASCO Certified program.”
“CancerLinQ may be one of the most important oncology networks in existence. We are pleased and privileged to be able to advance the original quality improvement goals and follow-on research interests of CancerLinQ in collaboration with ASCO, with urgency and alacrity,” said Jeff Elton, PhD, Chief Executive Officer of ConcertAI. “We are committing more than $250 million to the quality solutions, data solutions, and novel clinical trial solutions over the coming few years to achieve the highest-quality care, accelerate needed new biomedical innovations, and assure the best possible outcomes for patients.”
ConcertAI will collaborate with ASCO to substantially enhance the value of CancerLinQ for oncology practices and their patients by taking the following steps:
- Bolstering SmartLinQ to include new data sources alongside the robust clinical data currently available
- Making clinical trials participation more accessible and less burdensome through ConcertAI’s Digital Accelerated Clinical Trials platform
- Developing more robust clinical decision support within SmartLinQ
- Supporting automated EMR integration, bringing SmartLinQ seamlessly into practices’ workflows.
“The scope and scale of what CancerLinQ and ConcertAI can accomplish together are unprecedented,” said Eric P. Winer, MD, FASCO, Chair of the Board of ASCO. “We’ve successfully built a real-world data platform that delivers actionable insights to the cancer community—and now CancerLinQ is poised to sustain and increase its impact for oncology practices and patients for the long term.”
Eric P. Winer, MD, FASCO
For more information about the acquisition, view the Q&A.
