Oracle Health Sciences Network Recruits Trial Participants in the Cloud

Oracle has introduced Health Sciences Network, a set of cloud applications that will de-identify patient data, link health care organizations with information from clinical trials and screen patients for participation.

The company developed the applications with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) and Aurora Health Care, a health care system in eastern Wisconsin and northern Illinois.

Announced June 25, the suite includes Health Sciences Protocol Validator, an application that allows clinical research teams to screen patients across multiple health systems for participation in trials.

Protocol Validator works with Oracle Health Sciences Patient Recruiter to enable clinical investigators to identify patient cohorts and determine the suitability of protocols. The applications allow researchers to recruit patients based on genomic features and clinical characteristics so they would be the most relevant subjects for clinical studies.

Validating protocols and recruiting patients are two areas that contribute to budget variances and delays in development of drug therapies, according to Oracle.

With Health Sciences Network, Oracle aims to accelerate research from concept to patient recruitment. It will also allow targeted therapies to come to market more quickly, the company reported.

For the development of Health Sciences Network, Aurora contributed de-identified electronic health records (EHRs) along with DNA samples from a biobank started four years ago, Randall Lambrecht, senior vice president of research at Aurora, said in a statement.

By using the cloud-based applications, medical research for new drugs can be accelerated by as much as a year, Lambrecht said in his statement.

UPMC is looking to invest in platforms like Health Sciences Network that provide care based on personalized data, Dr. Steve Shapiro, chief medical and scientific officer for UPMC, said in a statement.

Oracle is a member of the Partnership to Advance Clinical Electronic Research (PACeR), a New York-based consortium of providers, research institutions, pharmaceutical companies and technology vendors. The group will use Health Sciences Network to allow medical centers to evaluate data capabilities and identify new methods for identifying groups of trial participants, or cohorts. PACeR will also use the application for modeling protocols and collecting clinical data for research.

“Oracle’s expertise will greatly benefit our multi-stakeholder collaboration and help us realize our vision of enabling secure, real-time access to de-identified patient data across the health care and life sciences ecosystem,” Dr. David A. Krusch, chief medical information officer for the University of Rochester Medical Center and chairman of PACeR’s project leadership committee, said in a statement.

“To accelerate delivery of safer, more effective and personalized treatments, organizations across the health care value chain are increasingly seeking new ways to work together,” Neil de Crescenzo, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Health Sciences, said in a statement.

Health Sciences Network will build a secure bridge among bio-pharma companies, health systems and regulators, he said.

It conforms to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations on privacy and information security, Oracle reported.

On June 26, Oracle launched a new version of Health Sciences Translational Research Center, a platform that allows researchers to target patient populations with similar characteristics based on EHRs and administrative, genomic and proteomic data. The software helps scientists identify biomarkers for clinical research.