{"id":18599,"date":"2016-11-18T16:29:09","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T21:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/memorial-sloan-kettering-cancer-center-leveraging-technology-to-improve-cancer-treatment\/"},"modified":"2016-11-18T16:29:09","modified_gmt":"2016-11-18T21:29:09","slug":"memorial-sloan-kettering-cancer-center-leveraging-technology-to-improve-cancer-treatment","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/memorial-sloan-kettering-cancer-center-leveraging-technology-to-improve-cancer-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center: Leveraging Technology To Improve Cancer Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) is the world’s oldest and largest private cancer center, with a business model centered around providing high quality healthcare to patients.[1]<\/a>[2]<\/a> MSKCC has embraced digitization to benefit patients, physicians, and the\u00a0entire organization as seen through their adoption of electronic health records, and collaborations with Flatiron Health and IBM. Digital technology allows MSKCC to improve their operating model, providing high quality care in a quicker and smoother fashion, and expand their business model, finding new ways to create and capture value.<\/p>\n

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Electronic Health Records<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Electronic health records (EHRs) leverage digital technology to create a seamless flow of information at MSKCC, resulting in benefits ranging from improved patient safety and satisfaction to improved physician efficiency and accuracy.[3]<\/a>[4]<\/a> EHRs are digital versions of paper charts, containing a patient\u2019s full medical history from all providers.[5]<\/a> EHRs provide physicians with more complete information about the patient, improving their ability to make well-informed treatment decisions.[6]<\/a> \u00a0EHRs also alert physicians to potential medication errors and remind them to meet clinical guidelines.[7]<\/a> The resulting improved care and reduced errors make it easier operationally for the hospital to deliver on their customer promise. Further, productivity gains allow for a faster delivery of that quality care.[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

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EHRs offer MSKCC important financial benefits relative to hospitals not leveraging this technology. Faster charge capture and fewer billing errors drive\u00a0improved cash flow and revenue.[10]<\/a> The electronic availability of information also reduces costs, eliminating unnecessary tests and the costs of maintaining paper files.[11]<\/a>\u00a0EHR adoption however has some drawbacks: high acquisition costs, ongoing maintenance costs, and privacy concerns.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Flatiron Health Collaboration<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

MSKCC, embracing the digital revolution, recently partnered with Flatiron Health.[13]<\/a> Flatiron is using technology to solve the problem of lost and unleveraged data on oncology patient treatment journeys. Flatiron\u2019s goal is to collect patient outcomes data on a common searchable platform to improve cancer care.[14]<\/a> MSKCC, by partnering with Flatiron, will be contributing to the database development, and benefiting from the collective learnings from cancer patients across the country through access to an aggregated outcomes database.[15]<\/a> This partnership enables efficiencies in delivering quality healthcare and patient satisfaction. The ability to better anticipate the right drug for a patient, leveraging insights from similar patients\u2019 outcomes beyond their own center\u2019s walls, helps even the best physicians optimize results. Further, sharing insights with oncology providers broadly through the Flatiron platform expands our perception of the value a hospital can provide \u2013 beyond just providing quality care in their own hospital, to providing this value more broadly across the country.<\/p>\n

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IBM Watson Collaboration<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

IBM Watson is a supercomputer that can function as a doctor running through thousands of clinical studies, patient records, and medical textbooks to deliver a diagnosis and treatment plan.[16]<\/a> MSKCC partnered with IBM to develop the \u201cWatson for Oncology\u201d application, training Watson to think like MSKCC experts in oncology, so doctors anywhere can access this level of expertise through licensing the program.[17]<\/a> With this partnership, MSKCC is showing they don\u2019t want to just use technology to better their own operations, but they want to be involved in the democratization of information, leveraging technology to better cancer treatment worldwide. For this contribution, MSKCC had a shared revenue agreement with IBM, contributing to the changing business model for the hospital.[18]<\/a> With this partnership MSKCC is further expanding the scope of its business model and value proposition beyond providing quality outcomes for their own patients to impacting the treatment of patients worldwide. Before this partnership, MSKCC was impacting broader cancer treatment through clinical trials and research publications, but with this technology they can dispense information in a more usable format, to the point that within seconds a patient in India can have a diagnosis and treatment plans specific to their needs.[19]<\/a><\/p>\n

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