By Clinical Informatics News Staff

August 30, 2018 | CancerLinQ announced that Integra Connect’s EHR Solution for Oncology has been recognized as the first CancerLinQ Certified Electronic Health Record (EHR) System. CancerLinQ is a wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) that oversees the development and operation of CancerLinQ, a health information technology platform working to improve quality and value of care for all patients by connecting cancer care team members, researchers, and sponsors with real-world cancer data.

In addition, CancerLinQ and Integra Connect have entered into an agreement to collaborate on products and services geared toward improving the quality of cancer care and the access of the CancerLinQ platform to oncology practices.

“This certification and collaboration with Integra represents progress in our efforts to seamlessly transfer oncology-related data and deliver it to practices in the CancerLinQ network,” said CancerLinQ Chief Executive Officer Cory Wiegert in a press release. “We look forward to working with Integra and other EHR systems as we try to fulfill our ultimate goal of virtually learning from every patient with cancer.”

CancerLinQ launched the CancerLinQ Certified EHR program to recognize systems that meet specific requirements for interoperability and cancer data standardization.

To become a CancerLinQ Certified EHR and maintain this status, an EHR system must do the following, among satisfying other initial and ongoing criteria:

• Support the creation and maintenance of health records including, but not limited to, individually identifiable oncology and/or hematology patient information;
• Maintain a leading industry standard for the recording of precise, structured, and standardized clinical data;
• Meet certain federal standards for EHR technology, interoperability, privacy, and safety;
• Work to achieve the continuous, secure transfer of data to the CancerLinQ system from patients associated with practices that both participate in CancerLinQ and use the EHR; and
• Participate in efforts among stakeholders in the cancer community to drive improvement of interoperability, establish core data elements, and support efforts to standardize and harmonize data approaches.

Integra Connect delivers a comprehensive, integrated suite of cloud-based technologies and services that enable community oncologists to optimize clinical and financial performance as reimbursement shifts to value-based models and precision medicine. In addition to Integra Connect’s EHR Solution for Oncology being designated as a CancerLinQ Certified EHR, the two entities are exploring ways to increase health information technology interoperability and provide valuable tools to oncology practices to improve and personalize care for their patients.

This new effort aims to provide all CancerLinQ subscribing practices who use Integra Connect with more streamlined access to the CancerLinQ platform, where they will be able to view and analyze relevant data for their patients. In addition, CancerLinQ and Integra Connect will work together to develop dashboards within the CancerLinQ platform, allowing all CancerLinQ subscribing practices to use additional tools to analyze patients’ health data.

“This collaboration will bring the power of data analytics into the offices and exam rooms of more oncologists,” said Charles Saunders, CEO of Integra Connect, in an official statement. “The new analytic tools we’re working to develop will provide critical resources for oncologists, so they can improve the day-to-day care of their patients.”