James Hamrick, MD, vice president of clinical oncology at Flatiron Health, gives a preview of the most compelling themes and sessions from the Association of Cancer Care Centers 50th Annual Meeting & Cancer Center Business Summit in Washington, DC. 

Transcript:

James Hamrick, MD: Hi, I'm Dr. James Hamrick. I'm a medical oncologist. I'm vice president of clinical oncology at Flatiron Health. We are a health technology company that provides point-of-care technology for cancer doctors and their teams and also creates large research data sets and helps make clinical trials more efficient.

What aspects of ACCC’s AMCCBS conference agenda do you find particularly compelling or innovative? How do these elements contribute to the overall value of the conference for attendees?

Dr Hamrick: This conference, I've been going for years now. It has a lot of value to me as an attendee. I really like, on Wednesday, I'm looking forward to just the networking at the opening reception. That's going to be wonderful catching up with thought leaders across the oncology space.

The poster session will be great. I know that we have a poster up from Flatiron talking about biosimilar drug substitution, a really practical thing for oncologists. There are going to be a bunch of other posters that really get at things that impact care in the exam room today. And so I'm excited for that.

You know a couple of themes that I see in the agenda coming through. There is some talk about workforce. And I look at that at a couple of ways. I think we're gonna hear something about burnout, and how we can try to make it easier for doctors to focus on the doctoring part of their job and less focus on some of the administrative tasks, and how that can help physicians stay engaged and on top of their game. Also, we're talking about how automation can make things more efficient, somewhat. That actually feeds in as well to integrate the electronic medical record experience. I know there's a session on that, talking about EHR integrations.

There's some great topics that I'm very interested in. Talking about collaboration, I see one talking about collaborations between primary care and oncology. That's incredibly important for the patient's overall care experience. Another one talking about CAR-T and coordination between the primary oncologist and the CAR-T center, again, just crucially important to patient experience and outcomes.

And then I'm also really looking forward to the clinical trial session, because I know that it's such a pressing need to find out not only how can we accrue to trials to learn more quickly. But how can we make sure that we're accruing a diverse group of patients into trials that really is reflective of the population that we take care of. So the agenda is very exciting, and I'm looking forward to Washington, DC.

The conference agenda covers a wide range of topics related to cancer care, business strategies, and health care trends. In your opinion, which sessions or discussions do you believe will have the most significant impact on the future of cancer care, and why?

Dr Hamrick: You know, I really think the ones about coordinating care between the different sites of care and the different doctors and care teams that cancer patients deal with. Cancer is an incredibly complex disease, often being managed by multiple care teams. So I really think that speaks to the way we let those teams communicate with one another and be on the same page. Very impactful, very important for cancer care. We're doing a session talking about artificial intelligence and business intelligence. And I think that's gonna be really an interesting … We've got a great group of panelists, and I'm very excited to think about, you know, we hear all the hype about AI, well, you know what are things that are real today and solve problems in the clinic today. And then help as well to provide that data and business operations backbone so that doctors can focus on being doctors. Those should all be great sessions.

AMCCBS aims to provide a platform for networking and collaboration among cancer care professionals. How do you think the conference fosters meaningful connections and knowledge exchange among attendees, and why is this essential in the context of cancer care business strategies?

Dr Hamrick: Cancer is a collaborative endeavor. And so, whether it's the care of an individual patient, you know, a tumor board team working together for multidisciplinary care for a cancer patient or people planning research or solving problems that are impacting the operations and the finances of cancer centers, collaboration is a huge part of it. You know, you can't stay afloat just by yourself. No one is an island. So I look forward to this meeting every year because it allows me to connect with people from a diverse group. Community oncology groups, large health systems, people in the pharmaceutical industry. It brings the stakeholders together and has the right mix of content and networking time to be a really productive way to spend a few days in Washington, DC.

One of the key themes of the conference is navigating the evolving landscape of health care. In your opinion, what challenges and opportunities are most pressing for cancer centers in today’s dynamic environment, and how does the conference address these issues?

Dr Hamrick: Yeah, a couple of things. So from the purely clinical standpoint, the explosion of innovation of all the new therapies. Everything you need to know as an oncologist to take care of your patients is wonderful. So many new biomarkers, so many new approvals being made by the FDA every year to drive better outcomes for patients.

But dealing with that massive information and being able to make sure that you're able to take that as a doctor and a care team and implement it effectively on your patients is really important. So all the things addressing coordination of care are super important. Things that that never go away: How do I keep my site of care financially viable? How do I make sure that I can deliver a great care experience to patients, not only in terms of their outcome for survival and remission, etc, but also things like their financial toxicity, their satisfaction with their care. So I think all of these you can directly line from sessions at AMCCBS this year to some of these issues that really are pressing today for the cancer space.

Can you share a preview of the key insights or takeaways attendees can expect from your session on AI, and how it aligns with the broader goals of AMCCBS? 

Dr Hamrick: Yeah, I'm really excited about our session on AI, because we have some great panelists. I get to do the job of just sort of sitting back and moderating. But what I'm so excited about is AI has so much buzz around it. We're going to start off with an expert who came from the AI world, but not health care, and is now working in health care, who's going to sort of level set for this crowd, what exactly do people mean, what should I think about when I hear artificial intelligence or machine learning, so that everyone will come away a little bit smarter. Then, something that's also really important, we're going to have an expert in health care product safety talk about how he thinks about safety in tools that use artificial intelligence and machine learning. You know, there's so much potential for good, but there's also the risk of introducing bias or other potential harms that we may not be aware of. And so how do you build a framework for safety when you're using AI?

And then we'll also have some real-world experience. So we're going to have a vendor that's going to talk about the way they use it today. To solve some of the problems for their customers as well. We've got experts from the front lines that are going to be speaking, and it should be a very informative session. And we also look forward to some dialogue back and forth with the audience.