SUPPORT-Paper-ICON@3xCase Study

Transforming pediatric oncology research through data science:
the Princess Máxima Center’s
journey with DISQOVER 

The Prinses Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology using  ONTOFORCEs DISQOVER platform
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Industry 
Healthcare and Research

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Number of employees
+1350

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Location
Netherlands

OUR CUSTOMER 

The Princess Máxima Center is a research hospital where all children with cancer in the Netherlands are treated and all research into childhood cancer in the country takes place. That makes the Princess Máxima Center the largest pediatric cancer center in Europe.

More than 900 healthcare professionals and 450 scientists work closely with Dutch and international hospitals to find better treatments and new perspectives for a cure.

Use cases
  • (Pre)clinical Study registry (internal data only)

  • Central Patient Registry

  • Datadesk data request


The challenge

The Princess Máxima Center’s mission is to cure every child with cancer, with optimal quality of life.

To achieve this, a fundamental pillar of the organization is to ensure an optimized exchange of data and knowledge between research and care units so cross-functional data can be optimally and securely found and accessed, in compliance with privacy and security policies.

The Princess Máxima Center chose DISQOVER for this purpose, following an extensive pilot in 2022, involving a wide range of researchers and clinicians who gained a detailed technical understanding of the DISQOVER technology and experienced first-hand how it can efficiently transform operations.

The outcome 

 

The Princess Máxima Center uses DISQOVER to connect their siloed data sources in one harmonized platform enabling optimized data exploration and time and cost efficiencies.

ONTOFORCE’s DISQOVER platform strengthens Princess Máxima Center’s data exploration capabilities, enabling them to uphold the FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable) data principles as a research institution best practice.

On top of the value that DISQOVER brings in terms of efficiencies, innovation, and data democratization, ONTOFORCE’s team of data science experts also support the Princess Máxima Center users so they can achieve maximum results within the platform to further optimize research capabilities.

Michiel Kooper, Managing Director IDT (Information Technology, Data Provision, and Biomedical Technology) at the Princess Máxima Center for pediatric oncology, says

With ONTOFORCE’s next level search technology, we are able to safely open up more clinical data for researchers than ever before, helping us to improve our care for children with cancer and to accelerate our pediatric oncology research. We’ve already received great support from ONTOFORCE’s data science experts in implementing DISQOVER so it is tailored to the needs of our organization.”

Benefits

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Enhanced data discoverability and user engagement

DISQOVER facilitates the ease of finding data across the organization, prompting users to explore more data and approach research questions and tasks differently.

safety

Comprehensive data integration: tailored and secure

Integrated within Princess Máxima’s instance of DISQOVER is tailored and anonymized data from their electronic patient system, biobank data, metadata from patient questionaries, and experimental data.

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Unlocking new research opportunities through centralized data

As this data now sits in one place, users can explore datasets that they might not have known previously existed.

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Facilitating knowledge exchange and data utilization

Enabling improved findability and integration of data within DISQOVER is supporting an optimal exchange of data and knowledge between their research and care functions.

These efforts are all centered towards the organization’s larger mission:
to cure every child with cancer, with optimal quality of life.

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