MITRE has recently announced partnerships with Mayo Clinic and Nuance Communications to advance the use of common data elements for interoperability.
The McLean, Va.-based nonprofit organization announced a partnership with Mayo Clinic to conduct research and development on common data elements for oncology, cardiology and COVID-19. The collaborative research will further the development of platforms for intelligent automation, including mCODE and mCARD, common data standards for oncology and cardiology to improve quality and coordination of patient care.
MITRE is leading development of a common data model in oncology called mCODE (minimal Common Oncology Data Elements). This initiative is identifying cancer data elements that would be essential for analyzing treatment across electronic health records (EHRs) and cancer practices to improve quality and care coordination. The mCODE Initiative is a collaboration between the American Society of Clinical Oncology, its wholly owned nonprofit subsidiary CancerLinQ LLC, the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation, the American Society for Radiation Oncology and MITRE.
MITRE and Mayo will also work together to create a platform, known as mCOVID, to support planning, containment, and mitigation of COVID-19, which will be adaptable for potential future pandemics.
“Defining common data elements will help transform how we approach cancer and chronic disease, facilitating additional research,” said John Halamka, M.D., president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, in a statement.
MITRE and Mayo Clinic co-chair the COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition of more than 1,000 private-sector, nonprofit, and academic organizations, providing data-driven insights and research to help save lives. This strategic relationship is an additional collaboration to advance digital health and improve patient outcomes.
In addition, MITRE has entered into a collaboration with Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) to advance mCODE by using the AI-powered Nuance Dragon Medical One solution.
Used by more than 550,000 clinicians to improve documentation and reduce administrative tasks, the cloud-based speech recognition platform uses voice commands to collect and access oncology data, seamlessly integrates into existing workflows, and will be configured to incorporate mCODE data elements.
Clinicians will be able to populate vital cancer data directly into electronic health records (EHRs) using their voice, which will improve the quality of documentation and reduce data entry burden for oncologists, the organizations said.
“Every interaction between a clinician and a cancer patient provides high-quality data that could lead to safer care, improved outcomes, and lower costs,” said Jay Schnitzer, M.D., Ph.D., MITRE’s chief medical and technology officer, in a statement. “But first, we need data that is standardized and collected in a computable manner so it can be aggregated with data from many other patients and analyzed for best practices. And it must be collected in a streamlined way that doesn’t burden the clinicians. The Nuance offering will enhance this effort.”
Diana Nole, Nuance Communications’ executive vice president and general manager of healthcare, noted that combining Nuance’s AI expertise with the mCODE data standard provides oncologists with the ability to easily collect and gain access to critical outcome data by using their voice to securely dictate notes and search within the EHR using Nuance Dragon Medical One.
The mCODE model is currently used in real-world settings across the country, including in the Integrating Clinical Trials and Real-World Endpoints data (ICAREdata) project, a pilot for the use of mCODE in oncology clinical trials seeking to close the gap between EHR data and research, managed by the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology.
MITRE also has developed Compass, an mCODE-based FHIR implementation and SMART-on-FHIR application. Intermountain Healthcare is testing Compass to extract mCODE data elements from EHRs to create reports for providers and patients that can be used to make shared treatment decisions based on which treatments worked for similar cohorts of patients.
MITRE is also developing Camino, a SMART-on-FHIR application that provides computable standards-based clinical pathways. Navigation through the protocol is driven by mCODE data elements accessible from the EHR. Camino allows the oncologist to see both where the patient is on the pathway and recommended treatment options.
