Amgen and Cedars-Sinai Collaborate
Amgen (NASDAQ:AMGN) and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center recently announced a partnership to help support the improvement of healthcare quality in the treatment of multiple therapeutic areas that could include oncology, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and migraine. The organizations intend to jointly undertake research projects in one or more of these therapeutic areas. They also plan to focus on projects that could achieve better clinical outcomes, experience, and patient satisfaction.
Proposed initial projects under the three-year agreement focus on cancer therapies, in line with Cedars-Sinai’s ranking as Southern California’s largest provider of oncology services and Amgen’s leadership in the field. The partnership also plans to evaluate various ways to help improve medication adherence through technological or other healthcare solutions.
Given Cedars-Sinai’s No. 4 ranking nationally in the U.S. News & World Report's cardiovascular category, another joint goal of the partnership is identification of care gaps in cardiovascular disease. With heart attack and stroke on the rise nationally for the first time in a decade, the collaboration could leverage Cedars-Sinai's ability to identify patients in need of treatment using both electronic medical records as well as the capabilities of Amgen's population health team to characterize large patient populations.
Better patient identification could support early development of preventive measures in cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, and other therapeutic areas. In many cases, the cost of preventive therapy is a fraction of the cost of an event due to the disease and valuable to the patient's health and wellbeing.
"This synergistic partnership between two major health care entities is devoted to furthering discovery in large populations burdened with chronic diseases," said Shlomo Melmed, MB, ChB, executive vice president and dean of the Faculty. "We are excited to work with Amgen to help improve patient outcomes by expanding our translational and population research programs in precision medicine, care pathway redesign, diagnostic technologies and further harnessing the strength of electronic medical records."
"This agreement with Cedars-Sinai will seek to gather data about available treatment options to help improve clinical outcomes and patient experience in therapeutic areas with significant unmet need," said Peter Juhn, M.D., vice president of Global Value-based Partnerships at Amgen. "Globally, Amgen is engaged in over 75 distinct, value-based projects, spanning disease state collaborations, risk sharing and outcomes-based agreements."