Cota Links with Miami Cancer Institute

Baptist Health South Florida’s new Miami Cancer Institute is celebrating its 1 year anniversary with a key partnership. This week, the healthcare analytics firm Cota announced that it would join the new oncology center in a partnership aimed at using data to deliver personalized, value-minded cancer care.

The 2 companies have a mutual friend: Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK). Miami Cancer Institute is part of MSK’s Cancer Alliance, joining Lehigh Valley Health Network, and Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute in an initiative that brings MSK’s treatment expertise to community cancer centers. In November, Cota and MSK entered into a multiyear partnership with the same goal of turning data into better outcomes and value.

The arrangement with Miami Cancer Institute will incorporate the Cota Provider suite of technologies, including its decision support platform and Cota Nodal Address (CNA) system. CNA is a proprietary digital classification tool that allows for precise characterization of diseases within electronic medical records. The company likens it to barcodes used in retail.

"The benefits of leveraging the CNA will result in reducing unwarranted variation in treatments, costs, and outcomes," Cota’s Chief Medical Officer Andrew Norden, MD, said in the company’s official statement. "The use of Cota through the lens of the CNA enables physicians and other healthcare professionals to deliver care resulting in optimal clinical outcomes for every individual patient and to reduce the total cost of care for the population being served."

"With the ability to see genomic-level data alongside cost and historical clinical data, Cota will help accelerate our journey to value-based care," Miami Cancer Institute’s Chief Medical Officer Leonard Kalman, MD, said. He added that the announced collaboration would “[increase] the level of precision in our patients' treatment journey,” and “[ensure] that every individual receives the highest quality of care possible."

Miami Cancer Institute is a state-of-the-art $430 million facility that opened its doors in January 2017. It became part of the MSK Cancer Alliance the same month.

For Cota, the announcement adds to the young company’s growing list of partnerships. Founded in 2011, the company has raised more than $25 million to date. In addition to the recent hospital collaborations, it has inked a deal with pharma giant Novartis to share analytics techniques in a multiyear study of breast cancer treatments.

In June, the company unveiled a 3-way partnership with IBM Watson Health and Hackensack Meridian Health to develop value-based treatment courses for cancer patients. Norden formerly served as deputy chief health officer for IBM Watson Health before formally becoming Cota’s CMO in September.