PicnicHealth moves into oncology real-world data with AstraZeneca breast cancer partnership

PicnicHealth branches into oncology-focused real-world data in announcing a multi-year strategic partnership with AstraZeneca to accelerate early breast cancer evidence development and research. 

Health technology company PicnicHealth has announced an expansion into the oncology field of real-world data (RWD) through a new multi-year partnership with AstraZeneca to advance RWD development for early breast cancer. PicnicHealth will apply their expertise in building deep real-world datasets of longitudinal patient journeys through direct partnership with patients to advance oncology research and treatment.  

PicnicHealth has established success in compiling real-world longitudinal patient journeys for people living with chronic diseases through leveraging state-of-the-art machine learning, in combination with human curation, to port complete medical records into their online portal. Now, in a new collaboration with AstraZeneca, they are turning their approach to individuals living with early breast cancer to collect and structure their medical records data. The company aims to enable breast cancer research and treatment by forming real-world longitudinal datasets that can help researchers understand and evaluate the impact of different interventions. 

“The inherent strengths of PicnicHealth in organizing and synthesizing longitudinal patient journeys that span multiple healthcare providers and care sites make us an ideal partner to patients facing early-stage cancer diagnoses,” said Noga Leviner, CEO and Co-Founder, PicnicHealth. “Our partnership with AstraZeneca leverages the strengths of the PicnicHealth solution, as we will help collect and structure medical records data from the wide range of care experiences common in early breast cancer including primary care, surgery, radiology, and oncology along with patient-reported outcomes data.” 

PicnicHealth has opened for enrollment an innovative registry to amass a cohort of consenting US individuals diagnosed with stage I–III breast cancers. The PicnicHealth breast cancer registry enables people with breast cancer to contribute their de-identified data to advance breast cancer research and will provide ongoing longitudinal real-world datasets about the cohort for study.  

“Existing breast cancer datasets focus on care provided within the oncology specialist setting, but don’t necessarily paint a complete picture of the patient’s journey before cancer, their early journey being diagnosed with cancer, or their experience after cancer,” explained Carlos Doti, MD, VP, Head of US Oncology Medical Affairs for AstraZeneca. “Through our partnership with PicnicHealth, we hope to better understand the full patient experience, address new research questions, and ultimately improve patient outcomes and the overall experience of people living with breast cancer.” 

Whilst more than 1.7 million people are diagnosed with cancer annually in the US currently, advances in early detection and treatment have helped improve overall survival rates for many cancers, with annual US cancer deaths now fewer than 600,000.  

“With more individuals surviving cancer, it is critical that the healthcare community is able to understand the full journey of a patient with cancer – from early signs that something is amiss, through diagnosis, treatment, and long-term survival,” commented Dan Drozd, MD, CMO at PicnicHealth. “Advancing research requires big-picture data illustrating long-term patient experiences and outcomes, which one can only collect and compile by working directly with patients.” 

PicnicHealth expresses that is actively exploring further partnerships to develop new patient cohort registries for several other early-stage cancers, including colorectal, bladder and prostate cancers.