By DOUG MIRSKY & BRIAN GONZALEZ

What if digital innovations could be the key to reducing the burden of cancer? CancerX was founded in 2023 as part of the Cancer Moonshot to achieve this goal. By uniting leading minds across industries such as technology, healthcare, science, and government, we are breaking down silos and leveraging digital innovation in the fight against cancer. With ambitious goals to cut the death rate from cancer by at least 50% and to improve the experience of people who are affected by cancer, digital innovation is critical.

As a public-private partnership co-hosted by Moffitt Cancer Center and the Digital Medicine Society, CancerX has created a unique ecosystem and community of public and private innovators. We are focused on fostering innovation and collaboration to accelerate the pace of digital tools to help patients across their entire cancer journey. We unite experts across industries and the government, leveraging the success of the Department for Health and Human Services’ InnovationX model; a public-private partnership approach that has driven breakthroughs in kidney care, Lyme disease and COVID-19. In collaboration with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health (OASH), CancerX is in sync with the US government in our common Cancer Moonshot goals to boost government-wide engagement with industry muscle. This type of multidisciplinary partnership is necessary to change the landscape of cancer treatment and care.

At the one year anniversary of CancerX, we look back on a very fast pace in building up our three pillars of work, demonstrating the ways that digital innovation is contributing to fighting cancer:

1. Pre-Competitive Evidence Generation – A rolling series of multi-stakeholder initiatives to develop evidence, best practices, toolkits, and value models to drive the success of the mission.
2. Demonstration Projects – These implementation projects pilot novel, mission-aligned approaches to demonstrate their value and sustainability for scale to drive broad adoption.

3. Startup Accelerator – This program provides mentorship, education, and exposure to funding and clinical partnership opportunities to a start-up cohort aligned with the mission.

And we are already deeply underway with efforts across each of the three pillars.

With our inaugural effort, a pre-competitive evidence generation project, we initially set out to identify and demonstrate how health systems might derive the most value from digital solutions as part of their oncology strategies to support patients facing financial distress or access issues. In November, 2023 we released: 

• A Core Competencies guide for health system use in designing a digital strategy to improve patient access and reduce patient cost
• A Financial Navigation guide for support service divisions and nurse navigators to use as a guide for intervening along the patient journey with the use of digital health tools to reduce out-of-pocket cost
• A Solutions Catalog showcasing tools available off the shelf to support the implementation of a digital oncology strategy

The final two workstreams currently underway are focused more narrowly on defining and maximizing the benefit of digitally-enabled patient navigation programs for health systems, as well as the patients and care partners they serve. Resources from these workstreams will be released in the summer of 2024.

In our initial demonstration project, the CancerX community sprinted into action to support the collective efforts of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) to advance cancer-related data standards.

Specifically, we provided additional support and insights into the ongoing collaboration between the CMMI’s Enhancing Oncology Model (EOM) and the development of ONC’s United States Core Data for Interoperability (USCDI+) – Oncology extension, which aims to support the establishment of domain-specific data element lists as extensions to the existing USCDI.

The CancerX Startup Accelerator is the first-ever innovation accelerator focused on the intersection of digital innovation and cancer. We have brought together champions, innovators, and expert users of oncology digital technology to help boost the development of these promising startups that

have strong potential to solve unmet needs in cancer care.

Out of more than 100 startups, 16 were competitively selected for this first CancerX Startup Accelerator cohort. These startups are focused on one of five aspects of oncology: clinical research, screening and diagnosis, treatment and management, clinical operations, and patient/survivor/caregiver experience. They include:

• The Blue Box
• C the Signs
• Cancer Insights
• Curiva
• EnteroTrack
• GesundAI
• GrayOS
• Lind AI
• Mika Health
• Navya
• Oatmeal Health
• Orbit Genomics
• Realyze Intelligence
• Reimagine Care
• SurvivorPlan
• XanthosHealth

By the end of the cohort, these startups will have received in-person and online mentorship from experienced innovators, insights from subject matter experts, connections with potential investors, and networking with other oncology digital technology startups, giving them a jumpstart on bringing their products and services into the lives of those who are fighting cancer.

Doug Mirsky, PhD is Vice President of the Digital Medicine Society. Brian D. Gonzalez MD is the Associate Center Director of the Moffitt Cancer Center.

By KAT MCDAVITT and LESLIE KIRK

Innsena has made a $100,000 contribution to CancerX, making Innsena the public-private partnership’s first Impact Supporter.

Why? There are few conditions in which the disparity in innovations benefiting underserved communities is more apparent than in the treatment and prevention of cancer.

Patients without insurance are more likely to present with more advanced cancers, and the cancer death rate for people of color is significantly higher than for white patients. More people die from cancer in rural communities than in urban settings. 

In CancerX, we found a community of partners taking on hard problems to equitably deploy innovative solutions that can reduce the risk of, and cure cancer for all patients. Even—and especially—when financial incentives do not otherwise exist for the private sector to solve those problems.  

Innsena is committed to improving equitable access, treatment and outcomes for the most vulnerable among us. We focus on supporting improved outcomes for Medicaid members and underserved communities. The disparity caused by the absence of incentives and funding for innovators to enter the Medicaid market can’t be overstated. 

But innovators, and the investors who fund these pioneers, are exactly what our industry needs to change health outcomes in underserved communities. 

We decided that, if the incentives to innovate in cancer care for vulnerable populations don’t exist, then we would create them. Our financial commitment to CancerX is a step forward that we hope will start a broader movement. 

Our team’s $100,000 contribution will help the team at CancerX to accelerate programs underway—including its effort to improve equity and reduce financial toxicity in cancer care and research—and to more rapidly launch new initiatives. 

We’re particularly proud to support the public-private partnership’s efforts to improve equity and reduce financial toxicity. Cancer deaths are inequitably distributed across the United States—and those patients who do survive are 2.5 times more likely to declare bankruptcy than those without disease. 

Likewise, a key component of CancerX is a start-up accelerator for companies bringing more digital solutions for the treatment and prevention of cancer, with special attention given to organizations that focus on disadvantaged populations. We’re honored to support the start-ups selected for the first CancerX accelerator cohort with both mentorship and financial support. 

And to that end, as individuals, we’ve gone one step further to support start-ups focused on preventing and curing cancer for vulnerable patients. We’ve also partnered with Ben Freeberg and his team at Oncology Ventures to ensure that digital health start-ups innovating for all patients in the oncology space have funding available to advance their causes. 

Innsena is joining more than 150 organizations already working together to make a difference for all patients in the prevention and treatment of cancer. CancerX is co-hosted by the Moffitt Cancer Center and Digital Medicine Society, alongside the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology and Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. 

We need more innovators working to improve care for the underserved. Join us in supporting CancerX. As a community we’ll make a difference. 

Kat McDavitt is President and founding partner of Innsena. Leslie Kirk is CEO and managing partner of Innsena.