COLUMBUS, Ohio & CHARLOTTE, N.C.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–#clinicalresearch—Southern Oncology Specialists and Deep Lens today announced that they have entered into a strategic agreement that will use Deep Lens’ artificial intelligence (AI) based technology and other services to expand the practice’s clinical trial offering to patients. Southern Oncology Specialists offers comprehensive cancer care and serves patients in four locations in the greater Charlotte region. The practice is also a member of the Innovative Community Oncology Practices (ICOP), a collaboration of local oncology practices that work to improve and expand the scope of services in the community oncology setting through information sharing, educational activities and research. Deep Lens is a digital healthcare company that uses AI to accelerate clinical trial recruitment and enrollment for community oncology practices. This partnership will bring more precision medicine trials to the practice and broaden the practice’s existing research program.
“Clinical research is critical to advancing the development of new therapies and accelerating our general understanding of the way specific diseases present and evolve in unique individuals,” said William R. Mitchell, MD, of Southern Oncology Specialists. “We are committed to giving our patients every resource possible to aggressively fight their disease. Expanding our clinical research program, attracting more trials to our practice and identifying the right trials for the right patients right as they are diagnosed will help our practice serve and support our patients more effectively as they progress down their treatment journey.”
It is estimated that more than 15,000 oncology clinical trials are actively recruiting patients; however, fewer than 1 in 30 patients participate in a clinical trial. Limited trial site resources make it time-consuming to identify eligible patients, especially as trial protocols increase in complexity. VIPER supports care teams by automating the identification of potentially eligible patients at the time of diagnosis and easily matching them to relevant trials.
“Most oncology clinical trials will fail because they cannot enroll enough patients. This is largely due to the increase in precision medicine trials, which frequently have complex eligibility criteria that can be challenging for a site to manage in the often very narrow window of time that is required,” said Tyrone Richardson, vice president, provider sales at Deep Lens. “Deep Lens services are designed to minimize the labor demands of the practice and ensure patients are matched immediately to the right trials, right upon diagnosis. The Southern Oncology team is a research-focused practice and we are delighted to collaborate with them to help support the expansion of their offering to patients now and in the future. We look forward to supporting their team, their practice and most importantly, the patients who deserve every opportunity to access novel new therapies in development.”
Deep Lens’ VIPER will pre-screen all patients from Southern Oncology Specialists’ EMR (OncoEMR) and integrate molecular data feeds from Caris Life Sciences, Guardant Health, Foundation Medicine and Tempus as well as all pathology feeds to automatically identify qualified patients for clinical trials. The Deep Lens pre-screening and clinical trial matching solution is provided at no cost to oncology practices.
Deep Lens is working with a significant number of community oncology practices representing every region in the U.S. It is estimated that approximately 85 percent of cancer patients are diagnosed and treated at local, community-based oncology practices. Deep Lens is committed to expanding important oncology research by making trials more accessible to a larger and more diverse population within these local community settings.
About Southern Oncology Specialists
Southern Oncology Specialists is a premier, comprehensive cancer practice serving patients throughout the Carolinas. The practice offers complete oncology and hematology care with onsite imaging, high complex CLIA certified laboratory, retail specialty pharmacy and state-of-the-art infusion services. Southern Oncology Specialists’ board-certified providers offer personalized, compassionate care for each patient, in a comfortable and convenient setting. For more information, visit: www.southernoncology.com.
About Deep Lens
Deep Lens is a digital healthcare company focused on a groundbreaking approach to faster recruitment of the best-suited cancer patients to clinical trials. VIPER, Deep Lens’ integrated cloud platform, provides care teams with visibility and workflows that combine lab, EMR, and genomic data to match cancer patients to clinical trials and precision therapies at the time of diagnosis, accelerating recruitment and compressing study timelines to bring game-changing therapies to market sooner. Growing with sponsors, providers, and strategic partners, Deep Lens challenges the status quo so that patients can get the best therapies. For more information, visit www.deeplens.ai.
Contacts
Deep Lens media contact: Adrienne Kemp, media@deeplens.ai, +1 (949) 922-0801
Southern Oncology Specialists contact: Sarah Cowart, practice manager, SCowart@southernoncology.com, +1 (980) 213-2720