Editor's Note: Driver's partnership with GoFundMe has been corrected in the 10th paragraph.

By Benjamin Ross

October 4, 2018 | A recently launched global technology platform hopes to connect cancer patients to the best treatments. The platform, developed by San Francisco-based Driver and launched in the United States and China, enabling patients anywhere in the world to access treatment options across a network of cancer centers without leaving their home.

According to the company’s initial launch announcement, more than thirty leading cancer centers make up Driver's network, including the Cleveland Clinic, Mayo Clinic, Massachusetts General Hospital, Duke, Emory, and Howard University.

The founders of Driver, CEO William R. Polkinghorn and President Petros Giannikopoulos, both oncologists, wanted to create a platform that taps into the fact that, while there have never been more cancer treatments available, patients and their doctors are unaware of these options, and consequently patients are not living as long as they could, given the treatments that exist today.

Giannikopoulos referred to the current landscape of clinical research and treatment as “the best and worst of times” when talking with Clinical Informatics News.

“It’s the 800 lb. gorilla in the room,” he said. “Here we live in an incredible time of innovation in terms of information, and today there are guidelines for how to get screened for cancer, how patients should get treated appropriately, and there are incredible advanced therapies in the form of clinical trials. But the problem is people don’t always have access to what’s out there.

“You have to keep in mind that in one generation the complexity of managing the patient has literally exploded,” Giannikopoulos said. “40-50 years ago there were only a handful of treatments, so any board-certified oncologist could navigate the menu of options and take the patient’s basic medical record and recommend the right chemo or surgery. But now, the guidelines are like trying to memorize a map of London only the map changes every three months. It’s no wonder oncologists can’t keep up.”

The two founders tackled the issue, Giannikopoulos said, by taking a page out of Silicon Valley’s playbook.

“We decided to introduce the technology marketplace in the empty space between patients and the front door of the hospital,” said Giannikopoulos. “I see this as the first step in bringing high-quality care to everybody on planet Earth.”

“In a world of Amazon, Airbnb, and other technology platforms that have revolutionized our ability to access products and services, consumers deserve the same transformative power of these next-generation marketplaces when they are facing cancer and require treatment,” Polkinghorn said in a press release.

Patients join the platform using a mobile app, through which Driver obtains consent to acquire information such as medical records and tumor samples in order to identify both the standard of care for the individual patient and which therapies might offer them their best treatment options. Giannokopoulos says the company’s services cost $3,000, though Driver has been tinkering with ways to make their services more affordable for the patient, including the recent availability through GoFundMe and working with the patient’s insurance. “Ultimately, we believe the platform’s efficiency will bring down the cost,” Giannokopoulos said.

Driver’s platform will extract the information from a patient’s medical records, including samples, by utilizing a combination of proprietary software and hardware, Giannokopolous said, including two automated clinical laboratories, one in San Francisco and a second in Shantou, China.

The patient receives treatment options for both guideline-based standard of care and clinical trials available through Driver's network, explained Giannikopoulos.

Patients can review their treatment options with a Driver-selected oncologist through video chat, and then can select a hospital within the Driver network for further evaluation. Driver also arranges the appointment at each patient's hospital of choice and delivers their records and other information required for the evaluation.

A version of the mobile app is available for doctors as well, called Driver for Clinic. The app connects doctors to treatment options within their own hospital. With this information, Giannikopolous said, doctors can gain a better understanding of options for their patients.

“The initial rollout of this version of the app was at our academic partner-hospitals,” said Giannikopolous. “Doctors at those hospitals could actually filter and search their own inventory for treatment.

“And here’s what’s so wild, doctors sometimes don’t even know what trials are being run within their own hospital. They might know their trials, but they might not know what their colleagues down the hall are up to.”

Driver’s focus is walking through the process of medical treatment with the patient from beginning to end, said Giannikopoulos, while also taking the complex issue of data analytics and looking to the tech space to make said data available to everyone.

“What we’re trying to do is to move the analytics component out of the consultation process. Today, the oncologists spend most of their time trying to perform these information management functions that we think could be better performed in the technology space.”