GermanOncology
Leveraging Real-World Data to Advance Cancer Care

Real-world data (RWD) is vital in advancing oncology research and care. While data from randomised controlled clinical trials remain the gold standard for evidence influencing standard care and clinical research, it presents its own challenges. Clinical trial data often does not represent broad categories of patients, like the ones at both ends of the age spectrum or those with a second cancer diagnosis, preventing delivery of better care across the cancer continuum.

Running powerful analytics on RWD can help bridge the gap and fuel the cycle of research and analysis, deliver insights to improve clinical decision-making, and ultimately lead to new targeted therapies that benefit patients. GermanOncology, a healthcare analytics service provider, is enabling just that. It plays a pivotal role in advancing cancer care by providing detailed RWD and other information relevant to standard care and clinical research.
GermanOncology has created a vast database of more than 26,000 patient files, leaning on its growing network of more than 80 oncologists from around 35 practices across Germany. The company leverages this database to offer information on indication-specific therapy behaviour for more than 30 tumour diseases. Additionally, utilising this database, GermanOncology provides a diverse range of services for care providers and pharmaceutical companies in the areas of bioanalytical services, strategic consulting, project management, and entrepreneurship development programmes. As clinical and health economics parameters play an increasingly significant role in evaluating the efficiency of therapeutic measures in certain indications from a cost perspective, GermanOncology’s vast database and services can be a game-changer in advancing cancer research and care.

To that end, the company offers detailed evaluation and commented analyses on clinical parameters, courses, and treatment behaviour in different oncological diseases. It also provides complete project management in the development and implementation of clinical projects, develops IT tools for billing and revenue, prepares dossiers on healthcare cost structures and billing, and extends state-of-the-art training for pharmaceutical professionals.

The company’s longitudinal data documentation makes GermanOncology’s database more remarkable. Healthcare data service providers usually collect quarterly information from new networks of practices or hospitals. Their database doesn’t contain patient information throughout the course of a disease. GermanOncology’s longitudinal follow-up investigates each patient every quarter. Its database has comprehensive information on patients’ disease courses, including their second-line, third-line, and palliative treatments. The company has sizeable datasets on more than 30 cancer types, including colorectal cancer, breast cancer, and nonHodgkin’s lymphoma.

“Our database helps provide swift analyses for physicians and pharmaceutical companies to fulfil their unique requirements, be it the development of effective treatment plans, implementation of billing and revenue processes, or understanding of supply structures,” states Dr. Rainer Lipp, co-founder and CEO of GermanOncology.

Peerless Oncology KnowHow

GermanOncology delivers consulting and contract research services that are second to none by relying on the broad oncological expertise of the team led by Dr.Lipp and a countrywide oncologist network.

It covers a wide spectrum of areas, including billing and revenue processes consultation for oncological treatments, specialist medical framework implementations, support for launching new products and processes, and market analysis within Europe. These modular services can be customised to cater to every client requirement. For example, pharmaceutical companies can utilise GermanOncology’s services to quickly implement billing and revenue processes in their marketing and sales strategies. They can analyse and optimise process factors influencing drug distribution and prescription, avail written dossiers on the German oncology care landscape with reference to medications or tumours and broaden their market competence by understanding different supply structures. While providing such actionable insights, GermanOncology keeps its unwavering focus on examining the plausibility and accuracy of its database.

GermanOncology helps pharmaceutical companies in contract research projects in addition to the continuous collection of anonymised data from standard care. Whether it is to collect further data for a cancer type or enhance data quality through onsite monitoring, GermanOncology delivers tailored contract research services. This aids companies in faster implementation of their projects in the existing nationwide network.

Oncologists can also benefit from the company’s consulting services. Besides assisting physicians to develop effective treatment plans with accurate and realtime patient data, GermanOncology delivers a wide range of services. The company helps oncologists implement contract medical practices and structures via process analysis and optimisation. It assists them in developing IT tools for practice management, billing, and quality assurance. It also aids physicians in devising business plans for regional structures and medical care centres and developing cross-sector or crossdisciplinary care structures.

Inventive, Intuitive, and Intelligent Platforms

GermanOncology also provides innovative applications to reap the most out of its expansive database and services.

The company has developed Data4GO, a modular and web-based documentation software for the collection and evaluation of medical study data. Data4GO essentially brings the best of both worlds; the advantages of a web-based application and the interaction possibilities of a desktop application. The result is an intuitive platform that can be used to swiftly create tailored documentation interfaces. Data4GO allows researchers to access data easily via a web browser using a link and user credentials. What makes Data4GO stand out from other online data systems is its flexibility. Unlike its peers, which do not allow interventions in data collection with rigid workflows, Data4GO enables users to collect data in any way they choose, letting users add or modify data until the end of their study. All changes made are documented and can be traced for quality assurance. Invalid information is displayed immediately by the platform. With Data4GO, researchers have a desktop application with instant feedback.

By utilising pharma-economic data from contract medical practices, GermanOncology also extends its scope in cost/ revenue situations of oncological therapies. The company has developed web-based revenue and cost calculators based on billing processes and fee systems for various cancer types. These calculators cover therapies in fields like oncological, urological, haematological, and psychiatry, representing inpatient, day-patient, and outpatient conditions. It can considerably help pharmaceutical companies analyse reimbursement and revenue calculations of treatments for specific cancer types. These calculators can be custom-made and are offered via a subscription-based licensing model.

GermanOncology’s focus on continuous innovation in the space is further substantiated by its development of a new web-based tool, ONCOHELP, that can cater to a wide range of users like oncologists, pharmacists, and pharmaceutical companies. The tool helps users gather specific information from the vast RWE database. Oncologists can leverage ONCOHELP and arrive at an informed decision by obtaining information on how their peers treat patients in a particular situation. ONCOHELP offers them an information platform with easyto-use dashboards for RWE data analyses, guidelines for specific tumours, and therapy protocols. It also allows pharmaceutical companies to comprehend every stage of their drug development cycle by enabling comparison with RWE. GermanOncology has already developed the ONCOHELP tool for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and is set to extend its use for other cancer types.

As a testament to GermanOncology’s role in advancing oncological research and care, the company’s clientele includes some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies, such as Pfizer, MerckKGaA, AbbVie, Gilead Sciences, and Janssen Pharmaceuticals.

GermanOncology is set to expand its footprint beyond Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and extends its data project across Europe. By widening its collaboration network, GermanOncology is poised to stay at the helm of cancer research and care advancements.