TELESYNERGY® for Cancer Moonshot: Building Capacity in Africa

Cancer Moonshot New Actions Aimed to Reduce Cancer Burden in Africa

The White House has selected the “Global Pediatric Brain Tumor Network (GPBTN)” for Cancer Moonshot proposed by Bayer, the National Brain Tumor Society, Duke University and other partners and institutions including the Open Health Systems Laboratory (OHSL). The project will use TELESYNERGY® technology, originally developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). According to the White House announcement, this will “…enable hospitals across the continent of Africa to connect with U.S. hospitals and biomedical innovators to help match pediatric patients to neuro-oncologists, clinical trials, potential treatments, and importantly to organizations that may be able to help close geographic, financial, and cultural barriers.”

Dr. Parvati Dev, former director of Stanford University Multimedia and Medical Information Technology (SUMMIT), is leading the development of next generation TELESYNERGY®. Working with Samta Sharma, Jeeven Saini and the OHSL team of developers, the group has created a single pane view of data and devices for clinician-researchers, training, tumor boards, and clinical trials. The team has recreated TELESYNERGY® functionality in a Lego-like microservice system with a strong API (Application Programming Interface) and Internet of Things (IoT) connecting medical devices. The system is fully compliant with Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

Duke University serves as the lead for the Global Pediatric Brain Tumor Network (GPBTN.) Over the years OHSL has worked closely with Duke University on international programs in Cambodia, India, Pakistan and other developing countries. Duke’s lead, Dr. H. Kim Lyerly heads OHSL’s Council of Advisor for Science and Technology (OHSL/CAST) and takes an active interest in its international programs.

Professor Kenneth Buetow, Ph.D.  of Arizona State University, a recognized expert on biomedical information technology, is providing additional support to the GPBTN and OHSL.  Dr. Buetow advises OHSL’s TELESYNERGY® team and the GPBTN’s data science efforts.  These efforts are part of OHSL’s International Cancer Knowledge Alliance (ICKA) whose goal is to create a ubiquitous cancer grid spanning the globe to provide clinician-researchers anywhere and everywhere with the best computational tools they need to reduce the burden of cancer.

OHSL has developed the next generation TELESYNERGY® cloud-based platform for medical consultation under a transfer of technology agreement with NIH. After extensive user studies, learning from previous experience with the original TELESYNERGY® medical consultation system in the Ireland-US NCI Cancer Consortium, OHSL is working with several leading cancer centers in the United States to create test beds for further development and deployment with special emphasis on cancer disparity programs.

Mary Coffee, Trinity College, Dublin, who led the use of TELESYNERGY® at the Irish centers said: “The system was used in several ways: clinical, educational and research. Clinical usage facilitated multidisciplinary team (MDT) meetings. Present at the meetings were radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, surgeons, medical oncologists, physicians, nurses, radiation therapists and data managers allowing for full consultation and decision making.

“The benefits to patient care of access to MDT decision-making in the management of cancer patients are clear, and should not be compromised by geographical location. The establishment of centers of expertise for site-specific cancers and the expertise amassed by dedicated groups in large tertiary referral centers is a central component of the National Cancer Strategy and videoconferencing is the most efficient route to facilitate access to such multi-disciplinary, site-specific expertise.”

TELESYNERGY® according to the Ken Kempner, who led the development team at NIH Center for Information Technology, creates a “same room paradigm” whether a participating mentor and expert is 5 feet away or 5000 miles away. Kempner was closely associated not only with the development of the original TELESYNEERGY® but its deployment in several cancer centers in Ireland, Jordan and here in the United States.

Dr. Thomas Merchant of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital looks at TELESYNERGY® as an omnibus and versatile open system to connect data and devices for consultation between experts and/or mentor-mentees for capacity building across the globe.

The original TELESYNERGY® used expensive and cumbersome hardware videoconferencing as one of the components of the system deployed in the Ireland-US cancer consortium. The OHSL team replaced it with cloud-based Pexip technology which provides all necessary videoconferencing, and supports interoperability with other systems such as Team, WebEx, Zoom or Skype.

Working with National Institutes of Health (NIH) Science and Technology Research Infrastructure for Discovery, Experimentation, and Sustainability (STRIDES) initiative and several private sector partners like Microsoft Research, OHSL led a successful neuro-oncology digital twin proof-of-concept demonstrating the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning in translational research and precision medicine in a clinical setting in LMICs (Lower and Middle Income Countries). This has further led to an international collaboration between Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research (FNLCR), National Cancer Institute and Department of Energy to develop an open source digital twin software solution which, combined with TELESYNERGY®, could realize the shared vision for the “Future of Radiology”.

Dan Isaacs, Chief Technology Officer, Digital Twin Consortium of Object Management Group, believes “…despite much progress, non-communicable diseases (NCDs) like cancer are now estimated to lead all causes of death across the African continent,” and that OHSL’s open source digital twin software could make artificial intelligence tools available to clinician-researchers across the world to help reduce the burden of cancer.

Martin Deutsch, OHSL co-founder, speaking at BioIT 2022 in Boston, welcomed Eric Stahlberg’s remarks that OHSL is “walking the talk” by providing an advanced technology platform for clinician-researchers in low resource countries to access advanced tools for research and treatment of cancer. He added that this has been the founding principle for OHSL.

Open Health Systems Laboratory (OHSL) has been conceived to build global team science consortia by leveraging the best biomedical informatics, information, and communication technology. OHSL has technical expertise to utilize the latest developments in information technology, including informatics, natural language processing, and data collection and mining to bring solutions to our global community of biomedical researchers. Addressing key questions of medical science, OHSL consortia members are able to provide timely and focused global public health responses. We accomplish this by actively engaging participants to shape a specific agenda and goals, and then to encourage collaboration for collective action to resolve the targeted problems.

In partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, OHSL is establishing the International Centre of Excellence for Computational and Biomedical Sciences (ICECBS).

‍Contact Information

‍Open Health Systems Laboratory
Anil Srivastava
+1.240.463.3686
[email protected]
https://ohsl.us

‍Duke University School of Medicine
H. Kim Lyerly, M.D., B.S., F.A.C.S, F.S.S.O.
+1.919.684.0132‬
[email protected]
https://surgery.duke.edu/profile/herbert-kim-lyerly