Leveraging Novel Software to Further Improve Personalized Cancer Care

In a conversation with CancerNetwork®, Leila Tchelebi, MD, a radiation oncologist at Northwell Health, highlighted the next steps for implementing a comprehensive multi-institutional cancer database to improve the personalize care of patients with cancer. She spoke in the context of research that she and colleagues presented at the 2025 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting, which showed the database’s feasibility of streamlining patient care, consolidating data, and tracking survival outcomes across health networks.

On top of adding new variables such as laboratory values and imaging data to the system, Tchelebi emphasized the need for other institutions to adopt this database on a larger scale. Additionally, she highlighted how the system may assist in identifying specific patient populations who are eligible to enroll on certain clinical trials while elucidating the next best steps for a personalized treatment plan.

Transcript:

Our study demonstrated that it was feasible; that we could consolidate all these data into 1 place. Now, the goal is to make sure that this is done, utilizing all the different databases across our health system, and increasing the number of variables that are available. As I mentioned, at the present time, we are learning what more is needed beyond the basics, such as cancer stage, disease sites, and treatments rendered. We are now learning what laboratory values [must] also be pulled in [and] what imaging data need to be pulled in. There are tons of variables that can be added to this registry to enrich it and make it as useful as possible across multiple domains.

Then, the next step is going to be for this to be adopted by other healthcare systems across the country. It has the potential to be a useful tool. Again, amongst the 3 domains that I mentioned—clinical, cancer registry, and research—another very useful tool for this is for patients who are seeking to be enrolled onto clinical trials, often to determine whether or not a candidate is eligible for a clinical trial. A lot of information is needed about previous treatments that have been rendered, cancer stage, disease site, etc. Now, all of that is available in the database, so patients can be selected automatically for clinical trial eligibility. There are tons of ways that these data or this software can be utilized.

We are at the tip of the iceberg in terms of learning the various ways that we can use this software to enhance patient care and to personalize care for patients by determining what trials they might be eligible for and what the next best steps are in treatment based on their individual profile in the database.

Reference

Tchelebi L, Lindsay WD, Yee K, Wishinsky J, Labarca ME, Potters L. Building a comprehensive cancer database across fourteen treatment facilities in a large health care system. Presented at: 2025 American Society for Radiation Oncology Annual Meeting; September 27-October 1, 2025; San Francisco, CA.