Highlights
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DIGICORE is a pan-European network with a novel approach to enabling precision onclogy research at scale.
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DIGICORE is scaling up its activities across Europe, having been awarded a significant ERDF grant.
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A funded training programme in OMOP research leadership is currently recruiting.
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There are also opportunities to get involved in proof-of-concept OMOP studies.
The Digital Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research (DIGICORE) is a pan-European research network created to transform outcomes research in precision oncology. It was founded in 2020 as a European Economic Interest Grouping, and today comprises 40 cancer centres in 17 countries, as well as industry partners IQVIA and Illumina. DIGICORE’s motivating philosophy is that in an era of increasingly rare subgroups in oncology we need data at scale, and to achieve this scale we must reduce the cost of data normalisation through technology.
DIGICORE published its road map to technology-enabled research recently in Nature Cancer,1 with these critical components: firstly, a minimal target data set on all patients sufficient to adequately describe cancer, and available in most cancer centres; secondly, an integrated technology stack using multi-vendor natural language processing and cancer data conformed to Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) standards, for the normalisation of the data held locally under hospital control; and finally, a federated analysis layer with robust privacy protection using open source Vantage6 technology. Together, these components underpin ‘DigiONE’, a Digital Oncology Network for Europe. A six-centre pilot is underway, and DIGICORE has recently been awarded a substantial Interregional Innovation Investment (I3) grant by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to scale that network to nearly 20 centres or 80 000 new cancer diagnoses per year. For the first time, these centres are able to see a practical, clinically useful, way to digitise cancer care quality management.
However, the technology alone is not enough to transform European cancer research. Around that technology are needed the skills to build, maintain and use cancer OMOP for research. To that end, DIGICORE is launching a training programme on research methods, technology and leadership skills. This builds from pilot schemes run internally at DIGICORE, and this new scheme is now open for others to apply to.
The programme is called the IQVIA-DIGICORE Early Career Leadership Programme for OMOP (‘IDEAL4OMOP’). This is dedicated to building the next generation of cancer researchers in Europe for large, international outcomes research collaborations. The programme covers not only the technical skills required to design and run a cancer OMOP study, but also the leadership and management skills required for complex collaborations—skills which many clinician leaders acknowledge are rarely taught well, if at all.
As well as online and in-person training, a key component of the programme will be practical experience of working on an international OMOP study, for which funding of up to €300 000 will be available for successful teams. Teams that complete the programme will have gone end-to-end from study concept development to a fully completed study with research outputs. As a result, such teams will be in a strong position to secure follow-on funds from other sources.
The programme will start in early 2024, and is currently recruiting. It is designed for a range of disciplines: clinical, pathology, data science and research management—the only prerequisite being a strong interest in and commitment to cancer research. Through participation in the programme, participants will have the opportunity not only to develop their skills, but also to build an international network of like-minded researchers, and gain experience of planning and conducting OMOP studies.
IDEAL4OMOP is based on the successful IDEAL4RWE training course which ran in 2022-2023 with 4 study teams and over 30 participants. These studies are currently reading out, with the head and neck cancer team having recently presented their five-site study as a poster at ESMO 2023—with an ambition to build on this success and recruit another four centres.
The main difference between IDEAL4OMOP and IDEAL4RWE is the migration from protocol-specific common data models to the use of cancer OMOP as the underlying and universal common data model. More and more hospitals are becoming familiar with cancer OMOP through programmes like PIONEER, IDEA4RC and EHDEN funding, as well as DIGICORE’s dedicated funding for DigiONE. However, knowledge of how to build a robust and highly conformed cancer OMOP instance is limited, and to that end DIGICORE is supporting four multicentre proof-of-concept studies in cancer OMOP: a study assessing the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdowns on cancer care across all cancers, and tumour-specific natural history and treatment outcomes research in metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, metastatic hormone receptor-positive/human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative metastatic breast cancer and epithelial ovarian cancer. Those studies are now open to other centres who wish to participate and can transform the required source data to the OMOP common data model format.
To learn more on either the training opportunities or cancer OMOP studies, please contact training@digicore-cancer.eu.
Acknowledgments
Funding
None declared.
Disclosure
The author has declared no conflicts of interest.