Roche’s Flatiron Health is celebrating a milestone. Over the last year, the company has tripled the size of its international oncology network across the U.K., Germany and Japan, Flatiron announced July 23.
New York-based Flatiron is expanding globally to provide real-world cancer data that are often lacking, the company said in the release. Flatiron’s network now includes 30 institutions in Europe and Asia, including Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust in the U.K., Klinikum Stuttgart in Germany and the National Cancer Center Hospital in Japan.
"The unprecedented expansion of our global network will continue to support improvements to local cancer patients’ care and novel multinational research—fundamentally changing what’s possible for our partners and the patients they serve," Nathan Hubbard, Flatiron Health’s chief business officer, said in the release. “Our partners are already unlocking answers to complex research questions—answers that traditional data sources can’t support.”
To help build data sets from countries that aren’t the U.K., Germany or Japan, Flatiron followed up its network expansion with the formation of the Flatiron FORUM, a consortium of academic and biopharma partners that conduct research studies testing how well conclusions drawn from real-world cancer evidence translate across national borders.
Flatiron is also working within its native U.S., recently forging a pact to use Massive Bio’s patient database to identify and recruit participants for clinical trials. Flatiron will use Massive Bio’s database to identify patients who live close to clinical trial sites but aren’t participating in a trial yet and then refer those patients to research sites within Flatiron’s network.