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ClearForest Text Analytics Accelerates Breast Cancer Research Initiatives at Massachusetts General Hospital's Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center

Posted on: Monday, 30 October 2006, 09:00 CST

ClearForest announces today a partnership with Massachusetts General Hospital's Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center to utilize the power of text analytics to accelerate and improve breast cancer research initiatives.

Clinical breast cancer research faces a challenge: large volumes of highly valuable information are trapped within text-based clinical records. Medical records of women who have had breast cancer contain information that can help to better understand the disease and identify which women are at risk. Unfortunately, the current method of analyzing medical records is a very time-consuming and costly process. Medical researchers across multiple disciplines of medical, surgical, and radiation oncology are manually reading records and making mental linkages over hundreds or even thousands of records. Now, MGH is able to use ClearForest text analytics to automatically extract concepts from the unstructured part of records, such as drugs, diseases, and pathways. These concepts are augmented with existing structured data elements, such as pre-coded treatments and dosages, for a unified analysis of records across the multiple disciplines.

Kevin S. Hughes, Co-Director, Avon Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center, at the MGH is currently working with ClearForest to take a set of over 30,000 pathology reports from biopsies previously analyzed for the presence of breast cancer and see whether text analytics can identify those who have cancer and those who have high-risk lesions in the breast. If successful, this approach has the potential to dramatically increase the value of medical records while saving significant time and cost. In addition, this approach can then be extended to other cancers and other types of reports such as medical notes and operative descriptions.

Dr Hughes states: "Text analytics may provide a cost effective means to unlock the secrets held in medical records. If this approach works as well as expected, not only will medical researchers improve our understanding of the early detection and diagnosis of breast cancer, but we will be able to more quickly target the right women for further screening and preventive treatment."

"This is an exceptional opportunity to utilize our commercial technology for a good cause," said Thomas Tague, VP of Solutions and Marketing at ClearForest. "In light of October being National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (NBCAM), we are very excited to be working with Dr. Hughes and MGH on this pro-bono initiative. It's our hope that this approach can make a substantive difference in clinical cancer research."

About ClearForest

ClearForest Corporation is a provider of text analytics solutions, supplying the analytical bridge between two previously disconnected worlds of information--unstructured text and enterprise data. In allowing both to be analyzed simultaneously, ClearForest makes unified business intelligence a reality. Our award-winning solutions enable text driven business intelligence for customers such as Eastman Chemical, Reuters, Elsevier Science and International Finance Corporation to turn large volumes of contextually-based information into proactive business intelligence. Corporate headquarters are in Waltham, MA. For more information, please visit www.clearforest.com.

About the Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center

In the fall of 2002, the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center -- thanks to the generous support of the Avon Foundation -- opened a state-of-the-art center devoted to world-class breast imaging and surgical screening. Over the past four years, the Avon Foundation Comprehensive Breast Evaluation Center has provided the most advanced radiology, oncology and surgery services in a single conveniently accessible location on the MGH main campus. Expert MGH clinicians form a multidisciplinary team to coordinate personalized evaluation and treatment -- ranging from genetic counseling for women who are at particular risk of breast cancer, to a guided transition to Cancer Center services for patients diagnosed with the disease -- for every patient. Using the most sophisticated imaging and screening techniques and procedures, Breast Evaluation Center physicians, nurses and staff work one-on-one to deliver outstanding care to patients -- forming an ongoing and invaluable relationship in the process

Source: Business Wire

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