Catholic Health Initiatives and Syapse Launch National Cancer Precision Medicine Program

Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI), the nation's second-largest nonprofit health system, and Syapse, the leading precision medicine software company, are announcing today the launch of a precision oncology program to serve patients across CHI, which operates103 hospitals and hundreds of other care sites across a system in 18 states that includes four academic health centers and major teaching hospitals..

CHI is one of the largest health systems in the nation to make a commitment to oncology precision medicine.

Responding to Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative, CHI’s Precision Medicine Program intends, to the fullest extent possible, to share de-identified patient data with researchers across the cancer community, helping to further the collective goal of curing cancer. Syapse and CHI hope to make this sharing of data a reality within 12 months.

CHI and Syapse will describe their plans to promote cancer precision medicine and data sharing during the White House Cancer Moonshot Summit today at Howard University in Washington, D.C. CHI is represented by Dax Kurbegov, M.D., system vice president, national oncology service line. Syapse is represented by Jonathan Hirsch, the company’s founder and president.

“Our partnership with Syapse will allow us to scale precision medicine beyond academic medical centers, and into the community hospitals that serve a vast majority of the nation’s cancer patients,” said Dr. Kurbegov. “CHI has a mission to bring the leading technologies to bear in the fight against cancer, and this alliance allows us to deliver precision medicine to patients at unprecedented scale.”

CHI will launch the Syapse Precision Medicine Platform across its key cancer care facilities. The Syapse software platform is a category-defining solution for the clinical implementation of precision medicine, enabling integration of clinical and molecular data, decision support, care coordination, outcomes tracking and quality improvement. CHI will also use Syapse software to support its Molecular Tumor Board consult service and to match patients to clinical trials.

“Our partnership with CHI will allow cancer patients across the United States to benefit from precision medicine,” said Jonathan Hirsch, Syapse founder and president. “Syapse is relentless in its goal of enabling health systems to transform to value-based care through the systematic application of precision medicine, and partnering with CHI is a major step forward.”

About Catholic Health Initiatives
Catholic Health Initiatives, a nonprofit, faith-based health system formed in 1996 through the consolidation of four Catholic health systems, expresses its mission each day by creating and nurturing healthy communities in the hundreds of sites across the nation where it provides care. The nation’s second-largest nonprofit health system, Englewood, Colorado-based CHI operates in 18 states and comprises 103 hospitals, including four academic health centers and major teaching hospitals as well as 30 critical-access facilities; community health-services organizations; accredited nursing colleges; home-health agencies; living communities; and other facilities and services that span the inpatient and outpatient continuum of care. In fiscal year 2015, CHI provided almost $970 million in financial assistance and community benefit – an 8% increase over the previous year -- for programs and services for the poor, free clinics, education and research. Financial assistance and community benefit totaled more than $1.6 billion with the inclusion of the unpaid costs of Medicare. The health system, which generated operating revenues of $15.2 billion in fiscal year 2015, has total assets of approximately $23 billion. For more information, please visit www.catholichealthinitiatives.org.

About Syapse

Syapse drives healthcare transformation through precision medicine, enabling provider systems to improve clinical outcomes, streamline operations, and shift to new payment models. Syapse Precision Medicine Platform is a comprehensive software suite used by leading health systems to support the clinical implementation of precision medicine in oncology and other service lines. This category-defining platform enables clinical and genomic data integration, decision support, care coordination, and quality improvement at point of care. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Syapse is backed by Ascension Ventures, Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE), and Social Capital. For more information, visit syapse.com.