Medidata and Median Technologies want to make medical images a more effective tool in the fight against cancer.

Two medical companies have partnered to make patients' medical images easier to access and study for oncology researchers. Medidata, a top provider of software and analytics for clinical trials, is teaming with France-based Median Technologies on an effort to optimize and expand medical imaging in cancer trials.

Median Technologies, known as the Imaging Phenomics Company, offers algorithm-driven image interpretation and biomarker extraction, among other image management services on its software platform. The company will use the Medidata Clinical Cloud and Medidata Medical Imaging to bring its management systems into a more accessible digital environment that continues to meet regulatory requirements.

"We are excited about our collaboration with Median, an organization that is setting the gold standard for diagnosing disease, developing new therapies and treating patients through the use of medical images," Mike Capone, Medidata's chief operating officer, said in a press release. "Medidata considers the entire image management process, turning the challenge of this growing data source into a new opportunity for workflow intelligence, and we look forward to providing Median with the technology platform needed to make significant discoveries in the oncology space."

Medidata works with hundreds of life sciences organizations and has long been an active collaborator with other companies. In recent months, Medidata has announced partnerships, acquisitions, and years-long anniversaries with companies that focus on machine-learning, electronic informed consent, and document management, among other capabilities. Most of these joint efforts are focused on improving the efficiency and accuracy of clinical trials. In late February, the company announced a partnership with the Medical Device Innovation Consortium intended to help device makers gets products to patients faster.

During an interview earlier this year, Medidata president and cofounder Glen de Vries discussed the motivation behind the company's partnerships. Pointing to the value of more data points in improving medical treatment, he said, "The cool mathematical thing about more sophisticated models is that as you gather more data over time, by their very nature there are things that evolve and get better . . . If you were able to put 10 different inputs into your model for staging a disease right now and now you can get two or three more, then that model is already set up to benefit from those."

"There's this complexity in creating that dataset," de Vries continued. "Our job is to lower the friction to make it really easy to create an environment where in a rigorous, scientific, and compliant--from a regulatory perspective--way you can actually make that a reality."

"Our collaboration with Medidata will not only ease the management of images during clinical drug trials--it will enhance our analytical rigor, enabling our teams to extract high-quality imaging biomarkers for better study and patient outcomes," Jeanne Hecht, Median Technologies' chief operating officer, said in the release. 

Marie Thibault is the managing editor at MD+DI. Reach her at [email protected] and on Twitter @MedTechMarie.

[Image courtesy of GERALT/PIXABAY]