MolecularHealth collaborates with SAP to provide new employer oncology program

COPE enables self-funded employers to offer access to TreatmentMAP to their employees via a pre-packaged offering, which includes materials for employees, as well as working closely with patients’ physicians through the process of testing, analyzing and receiving results.

SAP is working with MolecularHealth to become one of the first organizations to provide its employees with access to COPE and plans to offer it in the third quarter of 2014.

SAP technology also plays a role in enabling COPE; the SAP Genomic Analyzer solution running on the SAP HANA platform is used in an early adoption phase to speed up the genome alignment process by a factor of 300 compared to previously used algorithms.

TreatmentMAP generates an individual tumor analysis for each patient and then provides a clinical interpretation of the genomic patient data to support the patient’s physician in making an individualized treatment decision. Based on a proprietary analytics engine, TreatmentMAP leverages the results of next generation sequencing (NGS) genetic testing.

Now, for the first time and in a clear and understandable way, physicians and individuals diagnosed with cancer will have access to actionable information to guide the selection of cancer treatments.

"With the advent of information-based molecular-genetic diagnosis, cancer can be individually and precisely profiled, and potentially transformed from a terminal to a chronic disease – supporting both the employee and his or her organization during the challenge of working and living with cancer," said Dr. Friedrich von Bohlen, chairman of MolecularHealth.

The TreatmentMAP offering, available from MolecularHealth offices in the United States and in Europe, is accessible to all patients diagnosed with solid tumor cancer, regardless of where they live.

In the U.S., a patient’s oncologist or pathologist sends a tumor sample to MolecularHealth’s CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments)-certified next generation sequencing lab in The Woodlands, Texas.

In Europe, a patient’s treating physician works with a MolecularHealth-certified oncologist and a tumor sample is sent to a certified next generation sequencing laboratory. For sequence data generation in Europe, MolecularHealth partners with GATC Biotech, Europe’s leading service provider of Sanger and next generation sequencing, as a preferred supplier.

Once sequenced, MolecularHealth’s TreatmentMAP delivers the information necessary to provide a result report that clearly identifies treatment options, along with biomarker information, safety and efficacy data by treatment, and possible clinical trials for which the patient may be eligible. TreatmentMAP became commercially available in Europe and the U.S. in April 2014.

As noted by Dr. Werner Eberhardt, chief health platform expert at SAP AG, "Improving people’s lives is part of our mission. We are proud to be able to spearhead the use of genomic information for precision cancer treatments together with MolecularHealth with the COPE program. COPE’s early adoption use of SAP HANA helps to shorten the time from diagnosis to treatment and helps enable researchers to gain insights from connecting data from different sources. We look forward to offering this solution to our employees."