Seoul National University Hospital CIO Professor Kim Kyung-hwan (seventh from left) and Syapse Director Andreas Heid (ninth from left) pose with other staff members during an open symposium for Syapse at SNUH in Yeongon-dong, Seoul, last Friday.

Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) said Wednesday that it has begun to operate Syapse, a cancer precision medicine platform introduced in Korea earlier this year.

The hospital signed a contract to introduce Syapse, a platform for integrated management of clinical and genomic data of cancer patients in the U.S., in January.

SNUH launched the platform after standardizing the data according to the medical environment in Korea for six months.

Hospital information systems had not been able to manage clinical and genomic data simultaneously, making it difficult for doctors to see genomic information in electronic charts frequently. Also, doctors could only reach a fragmented conclusion or interpretation as they did not get to see the whole picture.

Based on the data accumulated on Syapse, the platform provides patients with the best-tailored treatment options and can organize exceptional cases by analyzing the overall treatment results. It can also share clinical among genomic data among doctors while maintaining patient information security.

More than 300 hospitals in the U.S. are using this platform, which collects more than 159,000 cancer patient data annually.

SNUH plans to open up Syapse and build the platform into Korea’s largest precision medicine platform covering rare and chronic diseases in Korea.

“Although genomic data is vast, there are a lot of them that have not been organized regarding which treatment and progress will have the most effect on various cancers that have different types of gene mutation,” Professor Koh Young-il said. “The hospital expects that sharing of such genetic information will help to reduce unnecessary treatment, trial and error.”

Professor Kim Kyung-hwan, the hospital’s chief information officer (CIO), also showed high expectations for Syapse.

“The next-generation nucleotide sequence analysis (NGS)-based genetic panel testing received insurance benefits from last year, realizing precision care in the domestic medical environment,” Professor Kim said. “SNUH plans to present a new standard for the evidence-based precision cancer treatment by using Syapse.”

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