QuantiaMD and ICOS Partner to Help Cancer Patients with Cardiac Side Effects from Chemotherapy: Brief Report from the 6th Annual International CardiOncology Society Conference in Milan

WALTHAM, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--QuantiaMD, the largest online physician community, and The International CardiOncology Society (ICOS) announced at the ICOS 6^th annual meeting in Milan, Italy a partnership to launch the ICOS global physicians collaboration forum on QuantiaMD. This first-of-its-kind partnership brings together an emerging area of medicine with QuantiaMD’s dynamic clinical exchange to rapidly drive awareness, education and training around the cardiac implications of oncology treatments. The forum can be found at http://quantiamd.com/community/icos.

“With ICOS, we hope to set a new paradigm for how physicians learn and collaborate within a secure environment in critical areas of patient care.”

ICOS was founded in 2009 by Dr. Carlo Cipolla (European Institute of Oncology, Milan, Italy) and Dr. Daniel Lenihan (while at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX) with a goal of eliminating cardiac disease as a barrier to optimal cancer therapy. Previously thought to be a relatively rare phenomenon, studies done by Drs. Cipolla and Lenihan suggest that as high as 20-30% of patients receiving certain classes of anticancer therapies may have some level of cardiac side effects. Cancer therapeutics, both radiation therapy and chemotherapy, are known to have important effects on the cardiovascular system. Many of these long-term consequences did not become clinically evident until overall cancer survival improved enough for the effects to be realized.

ICOS is leveraging QuantiaMD’s extensive physician membership, and its breakthrough media and communications platform, to engage clinicians via mobile devices and the web. QuantiaMD and ICOS are producing a series of concise, interactive patient cases and other resources, which QuantiaMD will distribute broadly to engage and educate all relevant clinicians. In addition, QuantiaMD’s leading technology platform is enabling new and effective ways of collaborating across this global group of oncologists and cardiologists from top centers such Vanderbilt, MD Anderson and Memorial Sloan Kettering. Presentations, including audio and powerpoint from the 6^th Annual Meeting, will be placed on QuantiaMD as soon as available, and previous proceedings of the Annual Meeting are already available at www.cardioncology.com.

Cardiac side effects, such as heart failure, can prevent patients from continuing to receive optimal cancer treatments, as well as impact long-term survival. “Many cardiac side effects can be more effectively managed, and, in some cases, prevented, with currently available therapies,” said Dr. Lenihan. “Much more investigation is needed, but it is critical that we raise the awareness among oncologists and cardiologists to ensure optimal management of these patients.”

There are no currently established medical guidelines for the care of adults who have survived cancer therapy, particularly as it relates to heart disease, and, specifically heart failure. Dr. Lenihan is using QuantiaMD’s secure Clinical Discussion feature to draft and refine the first set of clinical guidelines on this important topic, soliciting input from members of many professional societies including the Heart Failure Society of America, American College of Cardiology, European Society of Medical Oncology, American Society of Clinical Oncology and the European Society of Cardiology. In addition, ICOS will leverage QuantiaMD to disseminate important new data being released during its annual meeting as well as help to support clinical trial centers become more connected in the future.

“Traditional web approaches have not adequately expressed or augmented the dynamism of medical practice and research,” said Eric Schultz, Chairman and CEO of QuantiaMD. “With ICOS, we hope to set a new paradigm for how physicians learn and collaborate within a secure environment in critical areas of patient care.”

About QuantiaMD

QuantiaMD is an online community where practicing physicians share practical medicine. Today’s physicians are overloaded and seek new ways to stay ahead. By joining QuantiaMD, members can share real-life knowledge and insights with over 150,000 of their peers and learn from over 500 experts from every major academic institution. We believe physicians are each other’s best source of knowledge, and that by bringing them together, they will reshape medicine. To learn more, visit www.QuantiaMD.com.

About The International CardiOncology Society

The International CardiOncology Society (ICOS) is a non-profit professional society started in 2009 by Dr. Carlo Cipolla, European Institute of Oncology, Milano, Italy, and Dr. Daniel Lenihan, MD, while at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Its purpose is to promote training, research and study in the fields of cardiology and oncology as associated co-morbidities, understand cardiology implications of oncology treatments and eliminate cardiac disease as a barrier to optimal cancer therapy. To learn more, visit http://www.cardioncology.com/.

The 6^th Annual Meeting had a fantastic participation of more than 130 attendees from 23 different countries and 5 continents, including these Centers of Excellence:

MD Anderson Cancer Center
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
European Institute of Oncology
Stanford University
University of Pennsylvania
Vanderbilt University
University College London, London, United Kingdom
Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH
University of Colorado - Denver
San Raffaele Hospital
University of Padua, Italy
Fortis Hospital
University Campus Bio-Medico
Bern University Hospital
University of Chile, Santiago, Chile
The University of Manchester
University of Defence, Czech Republic
H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, Tampa, FL
Umea University, Umea, Sweden
N. Copernicus Memorial Hospital, Lodz
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Radboud University
Nijmegen Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
The Ottawa Hospital, Ottawa, Canada