ON FEBRUARY 16 , JCO Clinical Cancer Informatics (JCO CCI) published its first special collection of articles. This collection highlights ways in which sharing cancer research data is now possible through individual networks, including ASCO’s CancerLinQ®.
In his introduction to the collection, “Cancer Research Data Sharing Networks,” author Jack London, PhD, opens by noting, “Sharing of cancer research data has been the holy grail sought by those of us engaged in cancer biomedical informatics.”
To achieve this goal, Dr. London asserts that bringing together data currently siloed in different locations is crucial. “Data sharing between the various cancer research silos is seen as a way to make the research enterprise more efficient and increase the pace of discovery. The targeted therapies of the precision medicine era have further amplified the need for data sharing, as populations being studied become smaller and necessitate more interinstitutional collaborative studies,” he wrote.
Breaking down silos of oncology information is one of the goals of ASCO’s CancerLinQ big data platform, which is examined in an invited review, “CancerLinQ: Origins, Implementation, and Future Directions,” by Samuel M. Rubinstein, MD, and Jeremy Warner, MD, MS, JCO CCI Associate Editor. The article reviews the rationale for developing an oncology rapid learning system, describes CancerLinQ’s development, and examines the challenges facing these systems.
JCO CCI was created with the objective of bringing people together to help realize the promise of informatics, so this special collection is one action for this larger mission. The goal for the collection was to initiate and provide a forum for a discussion about these networks, raise awareness of various opportunities among professionals in the cancer informatics field, and—hopefully—integrate efforts to achieve efficient sharing of cancer research data.
Read the full collection of articles at http://ascopubs.org/cci/collections/data-sharing. ■
© 2018. American Society of Clinical Oncology. All rights reserved.
