This interview is part of our HIMSS18 coverage and was recorded live in the exhibit hall.

On this episode we talk with Stuart Goldberg, MD, Chief Scientific Officer at Cota. Dr. Goldberg tells us all about Cota’s physician-led journey to organize and classify real-world evidence about every type of cancer. This effort led to something they call the Cota Nodal Address (CNA), and it’s enabling health systems to get very specific about the types of patients they’re treating, the costs associated with them, and the outcomes being achieved. This apples-to-apples comparison allows Cota to identify variation and address it in ways that are beneficial to the provider, payer and patient. It enables a concept Dr. Goldberg calls “Precision Payment”, which in turn enables proper bundled payment design, and precision medicine. 

And Cota is not only physician led, but the payers are on board too. Literally. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield lead their Series A funding round. Plus, they just closed a $40 Million Series C funding round in February. Cota is clearly a company to watch.

This was one of the most intriguing conversations I had at HIMSS ’18 and one that I’ll be exploring some more. I’m very excited to share it with you…

~ Don Lee

About Cota

Cota is a healthcare data and analytics company that enables providers, payers and life science companies involved in diagnosing and treating complex diseases to optimize the outcomes of individual patients and lower the overall cost of the patient population served. It is powered by the patented Cota Nodal Address™ (CNA) system, a unique digital classification methodology built by leading physicians and data scientists. The CNA is the first and only system that precisely categorizes patient factors, their diseases and intended therapies, enabling precision medicine at scale.

Cota’s technology enriches medical records to create research-grade data and joins it with a suite of analysis, visualization and management tools. This enables providers, payers and life science companies to analyze, report on and research outcomes, costs, treatments and quality at any granularity and stage of the patient journey. The result is a constantly improving system that merges technology and medicine to improve the lives of patients everywhere. For more information, go to www.cotahealthcare.com 

About Stuart Goldberg, MD

Stuart Goldberg, MD is Chief Scientific Officer at Cota, Inc. and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at Rutgers: The New Jersey Medical School. He also maintains an active clinical practice in the Division of Leukemia at the John Theurer Cancer Center. Dr. Goldberg obtained his medical degree at the Milton Hershey Medical Center of Pennsylvania State University. After completing internal medical residency and hematology-oncology fellowships at George Washington University Medical Center, he served as a BMT fellow at the Mayo Clinic and Associate Director of the BMT Program at Temple University. Dr. Goldberg’s clinical research has focused on new treatment strategies for patients with chronic myelogenous leukemia and myelodysplastic syndromes.

Recognizing the wealth of information contained in electronic health record data, he and his partners at JTCC founded Cota, a data and analytics company that seeks to optimize patient outcomes while reducing population healthcare costs. In the field of “big data” analysis he has used databases to redefine the incidence and complications related with myelodysplastic syndromes (published in JCO and Transfusion) and has reviewed observational databases (including SIMPLICITY) to foster adherence with evidence based CML monitoring guidelines (published in JOP, CRMO and CLML). Most recently he has used the Cota database to explore rates and implications of EGFR mutational testing among community oncologists (published in Clin Lung), patterns of care in T-cell lymphoma (published in CLML), end-of-life care decisions (published in Palliative Med) and cost-effectiveness of genomic profiling in lower risk breast cancer (published in AJMC). This research earned him the 2015 David King Clinical Scientist Award from the Association of Community Cancer Centers (ACCC). He is listed as a Castle Connolly Top Doctor for Medical Oncology in the NY Metro and NJ areas.

You can find the rest of our HIMSS ’18 Interviews here. Subscribe to Weekly Updates

If you like what we’re doing here, then please consider signing up for our weekly newsletter.

You’ll get one email from me each week detailing:

• New podcast episodes and blog posts.
• Content or ideas that I’ve found valuable in the past week.
• Insider info about the show like stats, upcoming episodes and future plans that I won’t put anywhere else.

Plain text and straight from the heart 🙂 No SPAM or fancy graphics and you can unsubscribe with a single click anytime.

The #HCBiz Show! is produced by Glide Health IT, LLC in partnership with Netspective Media.

Music by StudioEtar