Flatiron Health, Massive Bio partner to improve clinical trial access

Oncology-focused digital health company Flatiron Health announced it entered into a strategic partnership with Massive Bio, a company that helps cancer patients find and enroll in clinical trials.

Flatiron Health is an oncology-focused health technology company that offers a platform aimed at optimizing the clinical trial process, including selecting trial sites and identifying patients who are eligible for trials. The company also provides electronic health record services and clinical decision support tools to providers. 

Massive Bio uses AI to identify cancer patients eligible for clinical trials and connect them and their doctors to applicable trials.

Flatiron will use Massive Bio’s database on a per-study basis to find patients who are not enrolled in clinical trials but live close to a trial site.

Those patients will then be directed to one of Flatiron’s research sites, where they can be brought on as new patients and possibly enrolled in a clinical trial utilizing Flatiron’s proprietary technology and consolidated patient identification services.

“Flatiron Health is excited to join forces with Massive Bio, combining expertise and resources to advance personalized treatment options for cancer patients,” Michael Bierl, vice president of clinical research partnerships and general manager Europe at Flatiron Health, said in a statement.

“By leveraging Massive Bio’s robust network and database, we can continue to utilize our cutting-edge tools to empower sites to progress research, enhance workflows and efficiencies, accelerate clinical trace pace while ensuring diverse patient populations have access to life-changing treatments that might otherwise be out of reach.”

Arturo Loaiza-Bonilla, cofounder and chief medical officer at Massive Bio, said the company’s mission is to make access to clinical trials patient-centric and guarantee the right patient is matched to the right trial at the right time, regardless of where they live. 

“By pairing our AI-driven platform and concierge services with Flatiron Health’s extensive research infrastructure, we can help physicians and care teams expedite trial enrollment, reduce disparities in access and improve outcomes for more patients,” Loaiza-Bonilla said in a statement. 

THE LARGER TREND

In March, the University of Colorado Cancer Center (CU Cancer Center) and Flatiron Health joined forces to make clinical trials more productive by lowering the administrative burden for researchers.

The partnership brought Flatiron Clinical Pipe to the CU Cancer Center and UCHealth, which allowed clinical trial data to move directly from electronic health records to electronic data capture systems. The technology also transfers information directly from the EHR to trial databases.

Flatiron Clinical Pipe is an electronic health record to electronic data capture connector that captures and transfers trial data.

That same month, Flatiron collaborated with NRG Oncology, a clinical research consortium in the National Cancer Institute’s National Clinical Trials Network, to use Flatiron Clinical Pipe in a multicenter NRG clinical trial. 

In February, Flatiron partnered with Exact Sciences to increase clinical evidence generation for Exact Sciences’ molecular residual disease test Oncodetect. The alliance utilizes Flatiron’s clinical research platform to evaluate a wide range of solid tumor types. 

The aim was to gather clinical evidence in a real-world setting and disparate patient populations by using community care settings that are generally underrepresented in clinical trials. 

In January, DeepScribe partnered with Flatiron to bring DeepScribe’s AI documentation to clinicians who use Flatiron’s OncoEMR, a cloud-based electronic medical record platform.

The alliance made DeepScribe the first ambient AI solution partner for Flatiron Health.

Last year, Flatiron collaborated with the Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC) to promote access to clinical trials in a community setting, boost clinical study efficiency and increase the collection of study-related data. 

In 2022, Massive Bio secured $9 million in financing. Revo Capital and Kenan Turnacioğlu led the round, with participation from DEG. The company used the funds to grow its operations globally, market itself and launch new products.