CancerLinQ® said today it will expand its association with the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS) through a new partnership intended to draw upon the Society’s expertise and thought leadership.
A wholly-owned nonprofit subsidiary of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), CancerLinQ operates a namesake health information technology platform for oncology practices and cancer centers that is aimed at enhancing and improving the understanding and treatment of cancer.
The new partnership comes two months after CancerLinQ and ONS launched the CancerLinQ Ambassadors Program, a national practice engagement initiative designed to provide on-the-ground support and guidance to CancerLinQ participating practices on a regional basis.
ONS has begun recruiting from its membership credentialed nurses with experience in quality improvement, informatics, and technology who will serve as ambassadors and provide field leadership. ONS consists of more than 39,000 members and expertise in developing and implementing educational resources and oncology nurse consulting programs.
“We are excited to enhance our work with ONS, as oncology nurses become further engaged within the CancerLinQ community across the United States.” CancerLinQ CEO Kevin Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “Oncology nurses are playing a critical role in helping their practices integrate CancerLinQ into their daily cancer care.”
As a result, according to CancerLinQ, ONS is well positioned to enhance the value of the platform through nurse involvement, with the goal of ultimately benefiting cancer patients.
Through the partnership, ONS will see its leaders participate in the CancerLinQ Oncology Leadership Council and other CancerLinQ advisory groups. ONS will also have access to de-identified data from CancerLinQ Discovery™ for research and learning purposes.
CancerLinQ Discovery™, which launched in November, provides curated, de-identified sets of clinical data for professionals interested in pursuing hypothesis-driven research through the CancerLinQ database, a big-data initiative focused on rapidly improving patient care.
“Nurses will be integral in the collection and utilization of patient-centered data that will help drive new advances in oncology care in the future,” added ONS CEO Brenda Nevidjon, MSN, RN, FAAN.
The ONS partnership is the fifth strategic alliance announced by CancerLinQ over the past year with influential public, private, and not-for-profit organizations.
One such alliance is with AstraZeneca, which became the founding enterprise partner with CancerLinQ Discovery™ in November 2016. CancerLinQ has launched other formal partnerships with the American Society of Radiation Oncology (ASTRO), Cancer Informatics for Cancer Centers (CI4CC), and most recently in March, with the Hematology/Oncology Pharmacy Association (HOPA),
CancerLinQ says the alliances are designed to create a multidisciplinary, networked coalition of committed leaders for expert guidance, as well as speed up creation of new insights from the platform that can improve quality and efficiency of the cancer care delivery system.
CancerLinQ is supported in part through the Conquer Cancer Foundation, as well as supporters that include Amgen, Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Bayer HealthCare Pharmaceuticals, Boehringer Ingelheim, Cancer Treatment Centers of America®; Chan Soon-Shiong Family Foundation, Genentech BioOncology™, HELSINN, Janssen Oncology, Eli Lilly, Raj Mantena, R.Ph., Novartis Oncology, Pfizer Oncology, Thomas G. Roberts, Jr., MD and Susan M. DaSilva, and Susan G. Komen®.