Philips’ Oncology Solution Built on Philips HealthSuite and Powered by AWS Uses Multimodal Data to Inform Personalized Cancer Care

From early detection and diagnosis to treatment and assessment, oncologists and cancer care teams have to pull in data from disparate sources (genomic, molecular, imaging, pathology, and clinical) to determine the best treatment option, personalized for the patient. Generating clinically actionable information from these multi-modal data sets and staying up-to-date on treatment options can be a daunting task. With the growing number of targeted immuno-oncology and gene therapies, physicians need a better way to leverage these diverse datasets in real time to simplify clinical decision making, in accordance with rapidly changing evidence and guideline recommendations.

Philips, a global health technology company, is making it easier for doctors and care providers to manage and analyze the different multimodal datasets involved in cancer treatment. This helps them generate clinically-actionable insights and improve decision making at the point of care—in a way that’s more meaningful to them.

Philips HealthSuite Platform makes it simpler for oncology teams to deliver personalized therapy to patients by integrating genomic data with other modalities like imaging, digital pathology, and clinical data.

The platform, developed on Amazon Web Services (AWS), is a regulatory-compliant, cloud-based platform that provides foundational capabilities to unlock and share data, with security controls. With its dynamic workflows, simplified user interface, and intelligence capabilities to deliver insights, the Philips HealthSuite Platform is being used to develop solutions so Philips’ customers can interact with their data with greater ease.

This includes Philips Genomics Workspace, a cloud-based solution that unifies patient genomic data with disease histology, clinical phenotype, treatment options, and clinical trials, for a more comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic picture. Doctors can use the solution to better interpret genomic data to achieve confident results in a clinical setting, with the required traceability and reproducibility.

As part of its initiative to improve cancer care, Philips has collaborated with The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to use its evidence-based Precision Oncology Decision Support (PODS) system to run personalized oncology treatment and clinical trials using matching based on genomic markers within the Philips Oncology Informatics Solution (part of the Philips HealthSuite Platform). “If doctors put the data in the system, they can activate the rules and databases from the PODS system and use it to make this incredibly rich and complex data understandable and actionable,” explains Louis Culot, general manager of genomics and oncology informatics at Philips.

Philips uses Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) to process patient tests, which are variable in demand. It stores large genomics files cost-effectively on Amazon Simple Storage Service Glacier (Amazon S3 Glacier). These storage classes are purpose built for data archiving with high performance and retrieval flexibility, while being a low-cost cloud storage option.

Built using AWS capabilities, the Philips HealthSuite Platform helps Philips and its customers bring innovative healthcare solutions to market faster than ever, to improve patient experiences, staff satisfaction, health outcomes, and lower the cost of care. The underlying technology takes full advantage of AWS capabilities that extend from the cloud to the edge. This includes the global network of AWS hyper-scale data centers, its specialized data management and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) analytics, along with other leading-edge compute services.

The possibilities are limitless with using the power of data to improve cancer patient care. Philips’ hybrid multi-tenant system on AWS connects experts across centers, supports near real-time updates in biological interpretation, and facilitates interoperability across organizations—all while maintaining compliance with HIPAA data security rules. As researchers discover new genomic mutations and therapies, the Philips HealthSuite Platform shares that information in near real-time so doctors can use those insights to better treat patients. “Making these systems accessible and dynamic is only possible when we have this distributed computing environment through Philips and AWS,” says Culot.

Check out the “Precision Medicine at Your Fingertips: How Multi-Modal Data Drives Personalized Care” session at the 2022 Industry Innovators Symposium for more information.