Manifold: Procurement's Purchase for UVA Cancer Research

Jessica Lenore of the Procurement Team
led the way with the Manifold purchase.
UVA Health is a recognized leader in cancer care, performing in the top 10% of cancer centers in the country. While healthcare experts are concerned with medical treatments and taking care of their patients, it is important to implement behind-the-scenes technology to make keeping track of patients, research, and data easier for healthcare workers. The Procurement Team's work with AI company Manifold is a wonderful example of the valuable effort that goes into maintaining UVA Health's research database. 

A Problem with Database Access

The UVA Cancer Registry routinely abstracts data for cancer patients who are have been either diagnosed and/or received treatment at UVA Health. There are around 130,000 patients in this system, many of whom have had surgical biospecimens collected under waiver of consent or under the Total Cancer Care consent. Patients with abstracted clinical data and matched biospecimens are a much needed resource for many Cancer Center investigators, but the resources are underutilized due to the difficulty in data access. The data sits in siloed platforms and requires multiple teams to work together to link patients. Even simple feasibility questions for projects can take weeks to answer, significantly hindering research progress. 

Finding a Solution

Manifold specializes in assisting this process, by pulling research and information from all of these databases, putting them into one uniform platform, and making it functional and easy to use, integrating all the complex data sources into one searchable source. 

After Manifold was first introduced to UVA Health as a pilot program to test its efficacy, there was a push to proceed with its implementation across multiple data sources. And that's where Procurement's Jessica Lenore comes in.  

An Assist from Procurement Services

Lenore met and negotiated with Manifold multiple times, and received the green light on the program two weeks before it needed to be signed. She met with the Cancer Center department to clarify any questions, and moved ahead with signing. Lenore also facilitated looping in University Counsel and the Health Center's Infosec to make sure the AI language included in Manifold's contract was appropriate coverage for UVA and patient data. 

This was a tremendous effort, but given the scope and importance of it, Lenore and her team put extra effort in for the benefit of UVA Health, UVA Cancer Registry, and future cancer research.