ASCO's CancerLinQ Program

Clifford A. Hudis, MD, ASCO President-Elect, Chief, Breast Cancer Medicine Service, Attending Physician, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, describes the American Society of Clinical Oncology's (ASCO) CancerLinQ program.

The CancerLinQ program is a direct response to the Insitute of Medicine's call for rapid learning systems, Hudis says. Right now, 97% of patients who have solid tumors in adulthood are not treated on any clinical trial. Seventy-five percent of these patients are treated in systems with electronic medical records, indicating a potential to gain something out of those data that are already being well reported. The problem, Hudis says, is that electronic medical records do not use standards or communicate with one another.

Clinical Pearls

CancerLinQ will improve quality of care by giving physicians the ability to gauge how they are doing against guidelines. Consequently, CancerLinQ can provide better cost control, better efficiency, and do away with complex layers of auditing and redundancy in the current medical record system.

• The CancerLinQ program is a direct response to the Institute of Medicine's call for rapid learning systems
• 75% of patients with solid tumors in adulthood are treated in systems with electronic medical records
• Current electronic medical records do not use standards or communicate with one another
• CancerLinQ will improve quality of care and control costs